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Exploring the phenomenon and ethical issues of AI paternalism in health apps

Kühler, Michael ORCID iD icon 1
1 Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT)

Abstract:

Health apps, including consumer-oriented fitness apps, have two functions. They are supposed to monitor and promote users’ health, the latter by way of being an instance of persuasive technology. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) allows for AI health apps, i.e., health apps that act more and more autonomously when it comes to analyzing users’ health data and arriving at tailor-made results on how to improve their health. Consequently, AI health apps seem to gain a paternalistic potential. This is a game-changer, for corresponding issues of paternalism can then no longer be traced back to human engineers. Instead, the paternalizing party just is the AI system. Hence, AI health apps lead to the novel issue of AI paternalism in health care. In this paper, I explore this novel phenomenon and its ethical implications. Firstly, I discuss from a critical perspective whether the notion of AI paternalism makes (conceptual) sense to begin with. Unsurprisingly, I argue that it does and how so. Secondly, I briefly indicate important ethical issues that AI paternalism in health apps raise and which need to be discussed in more detail in order to judge under which conditions (certain forms of) AI paternalism might be considered acceptable, if at all.


Verlagsausgabe §
DOI: 10.5445/IR/1000133661
Veröffentlicht am 08.06.2021
Originalveröffentlichung
DOI: 10.1111/bioe.12886
Scopus
Zitationen: 12
Web of Science
Zitationen: 9
Dimensions
Zitationen: 14
Cover der Publikation
Zugehörige Institution(en) am KIT Institut für Technikzukünfte (ITZ)
Publikationstyp Zeitschriftenaufsatz
Publikationsmonat/-jahr 02.2022
Sprache Englisch
Identifikator ISSN: 0269-9702, 1467-8519
KITopen-ID: 1000133661
Erschienen in Bioethics
Verlag John Wiley and Sons
Band 36
Heft 2
Seiten 194-200
Vorab online veröffentlicht am 24.05.2021
Nachgewiesen in Web of Science
Dimensions
Scopus
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