Technosolutionism and the empathetic medical chatbot

Abstract

This article argues for the value of applying the concept of technosolutionism to empathetic medical chatbots. By directing one’s attention to the relationship between (techno)solutions and the problems they are supposed to solve, technosolutionism helps identify two important risks in this context that tend to get overlooked in the discussion on privacy, bias, and hallucination risks of (generative) AI. First, empathetic chatbots may lead to a redefinition of the concept of empathy into a communication pattern that involves key words and expressions that do not feel rushed and which can be taught to a machine. Given that empathy is a core value of healthcare, this hollowing out of the concept of empathy is concerning. Second, insofar as empathetic chatbots do not seek to facilitate or support the provision of empathetic care by human healthcare professionals but rather perform empathy themselves, they raise the risk of redefining healthcare’s empathy problem as a lack of empathy on the part of healthcare professionals. It is argued that this risks transforming the real issue underlying healthcare’s empathy problem—that healthcare professionals do not have the time and space needed to provide empathetic care (in part because of the introduction of digital health tech in the first place)—into an “orphan problem”. This in turn may create a vicious circle, whereby attention and resources are drawn away from structural solutions to healthcare’s empathy problem to technologies which are ever more successful in simulating empathy.