Moral exemplars for the virtuous machine: the clinician’s role in ethical artificial intelligence for healthcare

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to pervade several aspects of healthcare with pace and scale. The need for an ethical framework in AI to address this has long been recognized, but to date most efforts have delivered only high-level principles and value statements. Herein, we explain the need for an ethical framework in healthcare AI, the different moral theories that may serve as its basis, the rationale for why we believe this should be built around virtue ethics, and explore this in the context of five key ethical concerns for the introduction of AI in healthcare. Some existing work has suggested that AI may replace clinicians. We argue to the contrary, that the clinician will not be replaced, nor their role attenuated. Rather, they will be integral to the responsible design, deployment, and regulation of AI in healthcare, acting as the moral exemplar for the virtuous machine. We collate relevant points from the literature and formulate our own to present a coherent argument for the central role of clinicians in ethical AI and propose ideas to help advance efforts to employ ML-based solutions within healthcare. Finally, we highlight the responsibility of not only clinicians, but also data scientists, tech companies, ethicists, and regulators to act virtuously in realising the vision of ethical and accountable AI in healthcare.