Oral Presentations Abstracts: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, ROBOTS AND BIOETHICAL CHALLENGES

Abstract

View of Volume 66, Special Issue, September 2021

The arrival of digital research, where the object of research is transformed into numerical data, makes it possible to study the world and medicine, using new epistemological paradigms. What matters now is only the correlation between two quantities of data, with no concern for any consistent theory that explains such correlation. Today these correlations are used to predict with acceptable accuracy.

What seems to be the outcome of this new revolution is the dominance of information, a conceptual labyrinth whose most common definition is based on an equally problematic category-data.

The technological evolution of information and of the world seen as a series of data takes its concrete form in artificial intelligence (AI) and in robots. We are now able to construct machines that can make autonomous decisions and coexist with human beings. And in the context of healthcare it is possible to develop diagnostic approach, prescribe medication (see IBM Watson Program) or offer radiosurgery systems like Cyberknife.

Contemporary society presents extremely delicate challenges where the most important variable is not intelligence but rather the little time available in which to make a decision. Here, cognitive mechanisms can have important applications.

A series of anthropological and bioethical reflections can help to understand the challenges in the healthcare field: “Is it clear how this logic of hyper-individualization, governed by the use of artificial intelligence, will undermine the humanistic need for solidarity in this in deeds and mindset, in favor of private relationships between individuals and organizations?” (E. Sadin).