"Structural Injustice, Doxastic Negligence, and Medical AI" - Dr. Annette Zimmermann (York, Harvard)

Annette Zimmermann (Princeton University , University of York, Harvard University)

We are very pleased to announce that our third speaker in this series of colloquia will be:

Dr. Annette Zimmermann (York, Harvard) - "Structural Injustice, Doxastic Negligence, and Medical AI"

Dr. Annette Zimmermann is a political philosopher at the University of York working on the ethics of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Annette is also a Technology & Human Rights Fellow at Harvard University.

Dr. Zimmermann's research explores questions like: what is algorithmic injustice, and how do its effects compound over time? What role do risk and uncertainty play in this context? What does it mean to trust AI? Whose voices should we prioritize in collective decisions about AI design and deployment—and whose voices are currently excluded? Whose rights are most at risk? How can we place AI under meaningful democratic control—and would that solve the problem of algorithmic injustice? 

About the Summer Colloquium Series on Stereotyping & Medical AI

The aim of this series on Stereotyping and Medical AI is to explore philosophical and in particular ethical and epistemological issues around stereotyping in medicine, with a specific focus on the use of artificial intelligence in health contexts. We are particularly interested in whether medical AI that uses statistical data to generate predictions about individual patients can be said to “stereotype” patients, and whether we should draw the same ethical and epistemic conclusions about stereotyping by artificial agents as we do about stereotyping by human agents, i.e., medical professionals. 

Other questions we are interested in exploring as part of this series include but are not limited to the following:

• How should we understand “stereotyping” in medical contexts?
• What is the relationship between stereotyping and bias, including algorithmic bias (and how should we understand “bias” in different contexts?)?
• Why does stereotyping in medicine often seem less morally or epistemically problematic than stereotyping in other domains, such as in legal, criminal, financial, educational, etc., domains? Might beliefs about biological racial realism in the medical context explain this asymmetry?
• When and why might it be wrong for medical professionals to stereotype their patients? And when and why might it be wrong for medical AI, i.e. artificial agents, to stereotype patients?
• How do (medical) AI beliefs relate to the beliefs of human agents, particularly with respect to agents’ moral responsibility for their beliefs?
• Can non-evidential or non-truth-related considerations be relevant with respect to what beliefs medical professionals or medical AI ought to hold? Is there moral or pragmatic encroachment on AI beliefs or on the beliefs of medical professionals?
• What are potential consequences of either patients or doctors being stereotyped by doctors or by medical AI in medicine? Can, for example, patients be doxastically wronged by doctors or AI in virtue of being stereotyped by them?

We will be tackling these topics through a series of online colloquia hosted by the Sowerby Philosophy and Medicine Project at King's College London. The colloquium series will feature a variety contributors from across the disciplinary spectrum. We hope to ensure a discursive format with time set aside for discussion and Q&A by the audience. This event is open to the public and all are welcome. 

Our working line-up for the remainder of this summer series is as follows, with a few additional speakers and details to be confirmed:

June 17  Professor Erin Beeghly (Utah), “Stereotyping and Prejudice: The Problem of Statistical Stereotyping” 

July 1 Dr. Kathleen Creel, (HAI, EIS, Stanford) “Let's Ask the Patient: Stereotypes, Personalization, and Risk in Medical AI” 

July 15  Dr. Annette Zimmermann (York, Harvard), "Structural Injustice, Doxastic Negligence, and Medical AI"

July 22  Dr. William McNeill (Southampton) 

July 29  Special Legal-Themed Panel Discussion: Dr. Jonathan Gingerich (KCL), Prof. Georgi Gardiner (Tennessee), and Dr. Reuben Binns (Oxford)

August 12  Professor Zoë Johnson King (USC) & Professor Boris Babic (Toronto), "Algorithmic Fairness and Resentment"

August 26  Speakers TBC

September 2  Dr. Geoff Keeling (HAI, LCFI, Google)

September 9  Professor Rima Basu (Claremont McKenna)

For full information on all our upcoming events, please visit: www.philosophyandmedicine.org

Register for this event here: