Power, privilege and moral responsibility: learning from I.M. Young's Social Connection Model in the context of...

Artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare is assumed to introduce risks that are not easily addressed by dominant philosophical models for thinking about responsibility. When an AI tool makes an error that results in patient harm, the question of who is responsible is rarely straightforward. Dominant models of responsibility work when harm can be traced to a single actor, but they fail in socio-technical systems where decisions and actions are distributed across multiple human and technological agents. Iris Marion Young's social connection model of responsibility offers a systematic way to rethink responsibility in these contexts. Rather than locating responsibility solely after harms occur, Young proposes a forward-looking account that attaches responsibility to those who participate in and benefit from the structural processes that produce harm. Young's framework organised around parameters of reasoning-power, privilege, interest, collective ability, and personal connection- provides an alternative way for understanding differentiated responsibilities across core actors in AI-driven healthcare.