Dr. Sinnott-Armstrong, Dr. Borg, & Dr. Conitzer: Can Machines Make Ethical Decisions in Healthcare?

Artificial intelligence is proliferating and entering new industries every day. And while it’s been used in healthcare for 50 years, researchers continue to look for new ways to use it to improve care, being mindful of the ethics of AI.

Today, we’re back in conversation with a team of researchers, including a philosopher, a neuroscientist, and a computer scientist. This trio might be familiar to long-time listeners from an episode a few years ago, when we explored the question of whether artificial intelligence could be programmed to be moral. Over the last five years, this research team has been studying how to use AI as an assistive tool in allocating kidneys to patients needing organ transfers. It’s a project partly funded by OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.

Though the project is focused on integrating AI into evaluations of who gets a kidney transplant, the team is using that particular problem as the lens to explore more broadly the ethics of AI in decision-making. They’re asking whether it’s possible to imbue machines with a human value system, in what ways artificial intelligence can be employed to help humans make moral decisions, and how to ensure that when AI is involved in decision-making, the process retains humanity.

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• Supported by Templeton World Charity Foundation