Alan Turing Institute & Department of Science and Technology Studies, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK.
Sci Eng Ethics. 2022 Nov 28;28(6):63. doi: 10.1007/s11948-022-00396-z.
Many researchers have documented how AI and data driven technologies have the potential to have profound effects on our lives-in ways that make these technologies stand out from those that went before. Around the world, we are seeing a significant growth in interest and investment in AI in healthcare. This has been coupled with rising concerns about the ethical implications of these technologies and an array of ethical guidelines for the use of AI and data in healthcare has arisen. Nevertheless, the question of if and how AI and data technologies can be ethical remains open to debate. This paper aims to contribute to this debate by considering the wide range of implications that have been attributed to these technologies and asking whether current ethical guidelines take these factors into account. In particular, the paper argues that while current ethics guidelines for AI in healthcare effectively account for the four key issues identified in the ethics literature (transparency; fairness; responsibility and privacy), they have largely neglected wider issues relating to the way in which these technologies shape institutional and social arrangements. This, I argue, has given current ethics guidelines a strong focus on evaluating the impact of these technologies on the individual, while not accounting for the powerful social shaping effects of these technologies. To address this, the paper proposes a Multiscale Ethics Framework, which aims to help technology developers and ethical evaluations to consider the wider implications of these technologies.
许多研究人员记录了人工智能和数据驱动技术如何有可能对我们的生活产生深远的影响——这些技术与之前的技术不同。在全球范围内，我们看到人们对医疗保健领域人工智能的兴趣和投资显著增长。与此同时，人们对这些技术的伦理影响越来越关注，也出现了一系列关于在医疗保健中使用人工智能和数据的伦理准则。然而，人工智能和数据技术是否以及如何能够符合伦理标准，这仍然是一个有待讨论的问题。本文旨在通过考虑这些技术所带来的广泛影响，并探讨当前的人工智能伦理准则是否考虑到了这些因素，为这一辩论做出贡献。具体来说，本文认为，虽然医疗保健中的人工智能当前的伦理准则有效地考虑了伦理文献中确定的四个关键问题（透明度；公平性；责任和隐私），但它们在很大程度上忽视了与这些技术塑造制度和社会安排方式有关的更广泛的问题。我认为，这使得当前的伦理准则非常关注评估这些技术对个人的影响，而没有考虑到这些技术的强大社会塑造效应。为了解决这个问题，本文提出了一个多尺度伦理框架，旨在帮助技术开发者和伦理评估考虑这些技术的更广泛影响。
