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Seminar: AI in health must be the servant not the master: accountability, evidence and decision-making autonomy – Professor Angela Ballantyne, University of Otago

Event Date: Thursday 27^th August from 12pm –1pm

Location: Interdisciplinary Lounge, Crombie Halls & Teams (hybrid)

Registration details below.

We are pleased to invite you to an upcoming Lunchtime Research meeting. This month we will host the Aberdeen Centre for Evaluation (ACE) and Interdisciplinary Institute joint seminar at the Old Aberdeen campus. We will welcome Professor Angella Ballantyne from the University of Otago to talk on Thursday 27th August from 12pm – 1pm in the Interdisciplinary Lounge, Crombie Halls, and on Teams (hybrid).

Topic: AI in health must be the servant not the master: accountability, evidence and decision-making autonomy

In this talk I use Iain McGilchrist’s metaphor of ‘the master and his emissary’ to examine the ethical shape of human–AI collaboration in the delivery of modern healthcare. According to McGilchrist’s account of the two brain hemispheres, the emissary (explicit, decontextualized, analytic) is designed to serve the master (holistic, interconnected, meaning-oriented), yet in certain contexts risks usurping this role. I argue that clinical AI systems—diagnostic tools, predictive models, and AI scribes—can serve as powerful emissaries, but we should be wary of AI-tools scrumptiously driving decision-making. Recent regulatory innovations try hard to ensure AI remains in this emissary role, by insisting on a ‘human in the loop’ model, clinical authority and accountability for an AI-assisted decisions. But what actually happens in practice? Particularly in busy, resource-stretched healthcare environments? AI tools are at risk of displacing clinician judgement and attenuating relational care. In this talk I will explore this ‘servant-master’ dynamic with reference to: AI literacy, automation complacency and bias, clinical de-skilling, fiduciary duty of care, and financial compensation systems for AI error. I argue that it is unfair to hold health providers morally and legally responsible for AI-promoted decisions they don’t have the time, cognitive bandwidth, or epistemic foundations to evaluate. I present next steps for next steps for conceptualising and sustaining an appropriate balance between AI and human decision-making in healthcare.

Bio: Professor Angela Ballantyne teaches bioethics within the Medical Program at the University of Otago, Wellington, and has held roles with the World Health Organization in Geneva, Yale University, and the National University of Singapore. Her research interests include research with human subjects, justice, vulnerability, feminist bioethics, reproductive technologies, and data ethics. She has been President of the International Association of Bioethics and has served on national expert committees for covid immunisation policy and research ethics review and is currently on the National AI and Algorithm Expert Advisory Group and the Ethics Committee on Assisted Reproductive Technologies in New Zealand.

Registration: Please email interdisciplinary@abdn.ac.uk to register for this event, indicating whether you will attend in person or online. A light lunch will be provided for in-person attendees - please let us know if you have any dietary requirements or allergies at the time of registration.