The ethics of artificial intelligence in healthcare: From hands-on care to policy-making

Contemporary healthcare at all levels increasingly uses Artificial Intelligence (AI). However, since the various levels involve different tasks, have different data needs, and different ethical obligations, the AIs that are used have to be differently structured. Also, since healthcare construed as a commodity involves different ethical parameters from healthcare construed as a right, and different ethical systems entail logically distinct considerations, this also necessitates the need for differently structured AIs. This column sketches how and why this is the case. It concludes with a brief look at why AIs programmed into quantum computers would not change this.