9th rTAIM Online Seminar - ARIANE HANEMAAYER (Brandon University, Canada)

Ariane Hanemaayer

#9 Ariane Hanemaayer 30 April 2023 | 3:00pm - 4:00pm (Lisbon Time Zone)

 Zoom: 

Link: https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/98780678655?pwd=R1hTRkJvSHRsQjZINEM5Y1dxd3lRZz09

ID: 987 8067 8655

Password: 924226

Reframing AI in clinical decision making: A critical sociological approach to historical ontology

#Seminar 9: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and algorithmic technologies are often integrated into institutional settings on the basis of their ability to solve a human problem. In this seminar, I will focus on one such case, where AI and similar technologies have been implemented with the justification that they solve issues with clinical judgment, such as human error and variation in diagnostic classification. My argument introduces an historical ontology as a way of reframing current debates. Through historicizing debates about AI as a technological or ethical issue, I show how these underlying assumptions have shaped justification for and against the use of computing technologies and expert systems in medicine since the 1960s. While debates over responsibility, ethics, and machine capabilities are important to question when it comes to the role of technologies in medicine, it leaves aside other significant ontological questions about the technologies themselves and, in this case, clinical judgment. At the end of this seminar, I propose to clarify the kinds of questions that can be spotlighted through a critical approach, and make a case for reframing the predominant focus on technical and ethical issues.

Short bio: Ariane Hanemaayer is an Associate Professor at Brandon University (Canada) in the departments of Sociology and Gender and Women's Studies, and Affiliate Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Her research investigates the relationships among medical knowledge, healthcare systems, decision-making technology, and medical regulation. Her recent books include The Impossible Clinic: A Critical Sociology of Evidence-Based Medicine (2019) and Artificial Intelligence and Its Discontents: Critiques from the Social Sciences and Humanities (2021).