Join us for the a lecture in the Illinois Forum on Human Flourishing in a Digital Age Speaker Series with Paul Scherz.
Risk, AI, and the Ethics of Precision Medicine
AI and genetic technologies are rapidly changing the landscape of medical practice. In the emerging field of precision medicine, AI integrates data from genetic sequence and health records to identify risk factors. The hope is that these risk factors are then incorporated into an all-encompassing plan to prevent future disease. This talk examines the effects that this new intensive focus on risk might have on medicine. It discusses the dangers that patients' experience of health might disappear into anxiety over risk, how the integration of AI tools into the clinical encounter might change clinical judgment, and why these uses of AI might intensify the growing problems of overdiagnosis and overtreatment. It also suggests ways to implement AI that avoid these ethical problems.
About the Speaker
Paul Scherz is the Our Lady of Guadalupe Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. His work examines the intersection of theology, science, medicine, and technology. His interests in ethics center on the role of virtue ethics, especially Stoic virtue ethics, in moral theology. He has published articles on many topics in bioethics, such as human enhancement, genetic technology, and end of life ethics. His books analyze issues like the moral formation of scientists, the role of risk in contemporary practical reason, the ethics of precision medicine, and the ethics of artificial intelligence.
About the Illinois Forum on Human Flourishing in a Digital Age
Housed in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Illinois, the Illinois Forum on Human Flourishing in a Digital Age supports study and research into the possibilities for human flourishing in contemporary society.
The activities of the Forum combine philosophical reflection on human nature and the human good with practical reflection on the possibilities for living well, and for designing tools that contribute to human flourishing, in a world shaped by digital technology. Learn more: https://philosophy.illinois.edu/academics/illinois-forum-human-flourishing-digital-age