The Epistemic Status of AI in Medical Practices: Ethical Challenges

Abstract

In recent years, discussions have been increasingly emerging in modern scientific research that, in connection with the development of AI technologies, questions arise about the objectivity, plausibility and reliability of knowledge, as well as whether these technologies will not replace the expert figure as the authority that has so far acted as a guarantor of objectivity and the center of decision-making. Modern historians of science Duston L. and Galison P. in their book on the history of scientific objectivity, they talk about the alternation of "epistemic virtues", as one of which objectivity has been established since a certain moment. At the same time, the promotion of one or another virtue regulating the scientific self, i.e. acting as a normative principle for a scientist when choosing one or another way of seeing and one or another scientific practice, depends on making decisions in difficult cases requiring the will and limitation of the self. In this sense, epistemology is combined with ethics: a scientist, guided by certain moral principles, gives preference to one or another way of behavior, choosing, for example, not a more accurate hand-drawn image, but an uncluttered photograph, perhaps fuzzy, but obtained mechanically, which means more objective and free from any admixture of subjectivity. In this regard, the epistemic status of modern AI-based technologies, which increasingly assume the functions of the scientific self, including in terms of influencing final decision-making and obtaining objective knowledge, seems interesting. For example, in the field of medicine, robotic devices already provide significant support, taking over some of the functions, for example, of a first-level doctor to collect and analyze standardized patient data and diagnostics. There is an assumption that AI will take on more and more responsibilities in the near future: data processing, development of new drugs and treatment methods, establishing remote interaction with the patient, etc. But does this mean that the scientific self can be replaced by AI-based algorithms, and another epistemic virtue will replace objectivity, finally breaking the link between ethics and epistemology – this question needs to be investigated.