Bioethics and Artificial Intelligence

BETH 727 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

Increasingly clinical medicine, biomedical research, and health interventions are utilizing artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), algorithms, natural language processing, and autonomous robots. This seminar will explore the many bioethical implications of this rise in algorithms, artificial intelligence, robots, and brain-machine interface. Through assigned readings, weekly discussion, and engagement with local experts in fields such as reliance on black-box algorithms for clinical diagnosis; informed consent for procedures and research using AI; use of AI in surgery; robots for patient care; AI-based algorithms for suicide prevention; computational phenotyping; use of AI to identify incidental findings; and use of AI as a bioethics research tool. These topics will be examined through the lens of the foundational bioethics principles - autonomy, justice, beneficence, and non-maleficense - and also with consideration of privacy, racial bias, economic inquality, and social justice. Students will be required to submit weekly discussion postings, engage in seminar discussion, and complete a final writing assignment.