AI, medicine and Christian ethics

This chapter examines the uses of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare from the perspective of Christian ethics. It gives particular attention to the resources of theological anthropology. At the heart of Christian theological anthropology as applied to matters of medical ethics is the concept of dignity, and thus this chapter can be said to approach the question of AI’s use in health from a personalist and dignitarian perspective. Christian understanding of the person provides a point of convergence for establishing common moral views about the uses of AI within the medical field, but equally is the source of a distinctive Christian critique of certain technological futures. There remain aspects of medical care that are irreducibly human and in which uses of AI encounter limits. This chapter proposes an ethic organised around such ideas as solidarity, suffering and dependency.