Abstract
This paper scrutinises how AI and robotic technologies are transforming the relationships between people and machines in new affective, embodied and relational ways. Through investigating what it means to exist as human ‘in relation’ to AI across health and care contexts, we aim to make three main contributions. (1) We start by highlighting the complexities of philosophical issues surrounding the concepts of “artificial intelligence” and “ethical machines.” (2) We outline some potential challenges and opportunities that the creation of such technologies may bring in the health and care settings. We focus on AI applications that interface with health and care via examples where AI is explicitly designed as an ‘augmenting’ technology that can overcome human bodily and cognitive as well as socio-economic constraints. We focus on three dimensions of ‘intelligence’ - physical, interpretive, and emotional - using the examples of robotic surgery, digital pathology, and robot caregivers, respectively. Through investigating these areas, we interrogate the social context and implications of human-technology interaction in the interrelational sphere of care practice. (3) We argue, in conclusion, that there is a need for an interdisciplinary mode of theorising ‘intelligence’ as relational and affective in ways that can accommodate the fragmentation of both conceptual and material boundaries between human and AI, and human and machine. Our aim in investigating these sociological, philosophical and ethical questions is primarily to explore the relationship between affect, relationality and ‘intelligence,’ the intersection and integration of ‘human’ and ‘artificial’ intelligence, through an examination of how AI is used across different dimensions of intelligence. This allows us to scrutinise how ‘intelligence’ is ultimately conveyed, understood and (technologically or algorithmically) configured in practice through emerging relationships that go beyond the conceptual divisions between humans and machines, and humans vis-à-vis artificial intelligence-based technologies.
Highlights
AI has the potential to be applied in almost all areas of health and care (Ramesh et al 2004)
(1) We start by highlighting the complexities of philosophical issues surrounding the concepts of “artificial intelligence” and “ethical machines.” (2) We outline some potential challenges and opportunities that the creation of such tech nologies may bring in the health and care settings
We focus on AI applications that interface with health and care via examples where AI is explicitly designed as an ‘augmenting’ technology that can overcome human bodily and cognitive as well as socio-economic constraints
Summary
AI has the potential to be applied in almost all areas of health and care (Ramesh et al 2004). Particular attention was given to tracing the anticipatory discourse across these texts in order to investigate the implications of the promise of intelli gent, ethical, and affective machines across different health and care applications where different dimensions of intelligence (physical, interpretive and emotional) are embedded We explore what this might mean for the web of human and non-human relationships in these settings. Through an exploration of these different dimensions of intelli gence instantiated in different health and care contexts, we go on to argue that AI technologies and robotics re-materialise the boundaries of the human and the machine in affective and relational ways that challenge old distinctions and binaries between the artificial and natural, rational and emotional, and human and non-human, but they do so by augmenting and, changing human capabilities. We hope that our research will inform policy and help those involved in AI, health and care to deal with some of the challenges unpacked in this paper
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
