The rapid adoption and implementation of artificial intelligence in medicine creates an ontologically distinct situation from prior care models. There are both potential advantages and disadvantages with such technology in advancing the interests of patients, with resultant ontological and epistemic concerns for physicians and patients relating to the instatiation of AI as a dependent, semi- or fully-autonomous agent in the encounter. The concept of libertarian paternalism potentially exercised by AI (and those who control it) has created challenges to conventional assessments (...) of patient and physician autonomy. The unclear legal relationship between AI and its users cannot be settled presently, an progress in AI and its implementation in patient care will necessitate an iterative discourse to preserve humanitarian concerns in future models of care. This paper proposes that physicians should neither uncritically accept nor unreasonably resist developments in AI but must actively engage and contribute to the discourse, since AI will affect their roles and the nature of their work. One’s moral imaginative capacity must be engaged in the questions of beneficence, autonomy, and justice of AI and whether its integration in healthcare has the potential to augment or interfere with the ends of medical practice. (shrink)

The last decade has witnessed the mass distribution and adoption of smart home systems and devices powered by artificial intelligence systems ranging from household appliances like fridges and toasters to more background systems such as air and water quality controllers. The pervasiveness of these sociotechnical systems makes analyzing their ethical implications necessary during the design phases of these devices to ensure not only sociotechnical resilience, but to design them for human values in mind and thus preserve meaningful human control over (...) them. This paper engages in a conceptual investigations of how meaningful human control over smart home devices can be attained through design. The value sensitive design (VSD) approach is proposed as a way of attaining this level of control. In the proposed framework, values are identified and defined, stakeholder groups are investigated and brought into the design process and the technical constraints of the technologies in question are considered. The paper concludes with some initial examples that illustrate a more adoptable way forward for both ethicists and engineers of smart home devices. (shrink)