Islamic ethico-legal perspectives on medical accountability in the age of artificial intelligence

The integration of AI-empowered tools in medicine and healthcare raises crucial questions about medical accountability from an Islamic perspective. The chapter addresses two main questions: (a) what is the ethical framework that governs medical accountability, and (b) to what extent would AI-empowered medicine impact this ethical framework? To address the first question, the chapter explores the views of classical and contemporary Muslim jurists on the concept of medical accountability by examining the roles played by the three main stakeholders prominently featured in their discussions: God, the patient and the physician. To address the second question, the analysis of the discussions relevant to each stakeholder is followed by a distinct section dedicated to explaining how these discussions relate to the context of AI-empowered medicine. As demonstrated in this chapter, certain elements of the Islamic ethical framework of medical accountability are likely to remain unchanged; for example, the requirement that AI-enabled medical interventions should be permitted by God, consented to by the patient and performed by a competent physician. However, new elements need to be incorporated into this ethical framework. Besides the individual liability usually borne by the treating physician, new forms of liability should be considered, such as collective liability jointly borne by a medical team, corporate liability by a licensing institution and the liability that AI developers can bear.