Human: good.Īs people, we tolerate mistakes made by other humans but are far less forgiving of equivalent errors made by machines. Getting to that point, however, will require a shift in thinking. However, I’m optimistic that the application of generative AI will improve medical care, facilitate ethical decision making and even strengthen the bond between doctors and patients. Now, they fear that generative AI will erode and undermine that personal connection. Patients rely on their doctors to help them navigate these ethical uncertainties.

These questions have no clear-cut right or wrong answer. In those pages-and in the profession, itself-reasonable people disagree on a wide range of medical-ethical topics: Should physician-assisted death be legal? How best to allocate organs to those in need of transplants? What are the indications for the use of unproven treatments for life-threatening diseases? In fact, the American Medical Association maintains a vast code of ethics, which spans 11 chapters and contains 161 opinions on the proper conduct of modern practitioners. The moral principles that govern individual behavior and the ethics that shape the decisions of doctors are (and always will be) hotly debated. Patients frequently go to healthcare professionals with problems that have no objective or “right” answer. These scientific measures are important, but the practice of medicine isn’t always quantifiable.

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