Artificial intelligence is particularly suited for medicine, where the game is taking symptoms and matching them with massive databases of possible diseases, medications, side effects and more. The trend seems to be leading to AI doctors who make AI diagnoses with remarkable accuracy.
But do you want your cancer diagnosed and treated – including the possibility of AI robotic surgery – without any human intervention or empathy? Medical ethicist David Prentice of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity says probably not.
“AI is simply a fancy computer program. It's a tool to be used by humans, but to give it primacy really is going to miss that human quality,” Prentice said.
He says there is a reason medicine is often referred to as an art as well as science.
“Whether it's physical, whether it's emotional, whether it's spiritual, and those are things I don't think AI at any point, and certainly not now, has the ability to perceive and discern,” Prentice said.
He says the other concern is that AI could be the ultimate in socialized medicine, determining at once if the procedure you want or need should be rationed or denied due to cost considerations.
“It needs to be reserved as an analytical tool to assist the real healthcare personnel.”
