Overcoming Limitations: Examining a Humanistic Approach to AI in Healthcare

Abstract: This paper begins first by exploring Kate Crawford’s Atlas of AI. Crawford notes how data-driven initiatives shape and are shaped by the socio-political realities in which they are developed (Crawford 2021). She argues that the place from which AI technologies are developed reinforce already existing inequalities and power structures. Crawford, however, has been criticized because her argument fails engage ethical approaches might lend themselves to responsible uses and development of AI technologies (Tasioulas 2022). John Tasioulas argues that ethical approaches and guidelines for AI need to ask: “What is it to live a good or flourishing life? And what is it that we owe to others, notably fellow human beings, but also nonhuman animals or even inanimate nature?” (Tasioulas 2022). Both authors are concerned with not only what constitutes flourishing, but fail to ask who are those whose perspective is most often neglected in these ethical discourses. Drawing on the work of liberation theologian and philosopher Ignacio Ellacuría this paper emphasizes that technology and science hold implicit subjective positions that shape reality in a way that often disproportionately works against—what Ellacuría referred to as—the “poor majority” (Ellacuría 2013). The final part of the paper asks whether it is possible to engage in an ethical discourse around responsible use of AI from a place of privileged or how ought we engage those excluded from the benefits of AI.