Artificial Intelligence: the future of medicine, or an overhyped and dangerous idea?

Contemporary discourse on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in medicine is oft-sensationalised to the point of bearing no resemblance to its everyday impact and potential - either to proselytise it as a saviour or to condemn its perilous, amoral and sprawling reach.This report aims to unravel the paucity of understanding underpinning this hyperbolic duality, whilst addressing the potential clearly defining its ethical use poses to the semi-public healthcare models in Ireland and Europe.

The report contrasts the challenge of regulating the breakneck development of AI, with healthcare's necessity for stringent quality control in ethical technological development to ensure patients' well-being.Physical, practical and philosophical approaches to Artificial Intelligence in medicine are explored through Beauchamp and Childress' principles of delivering care with beneficence, non maleficence, justice and autonomy. AI is scrutinised under Kantian deontological, Benthamite utilitarian and Rawlsian perspectives on health justice. Actor Network theory is used to explain sociotechnical interactions governing human stakeholders developing ethical AI.These analyses operate firstly to define AI concisely, then ground it in its contemporary and future functions in healthcare. They highlight the importance of aligning medical AI with accepted ethical standards as a necessity of its integrated use across healthcare.

This report concludes that balanced assessment of AI's role in healthcare requires improvement in three areas: improving clarity in definition of AI and its extant remit in medicine; aligning contemporary discourse on AI use with contemporary objective ethical, legal and system frameworks; and clearly identifying for dismissal a number of logical fallacies deliberately sensationalising AI's potential.