Hastings Center News

Kickoff Meeting: Toward a Code of Conduct for Artificial Intelligence

The first meeting of the National Academy of Medicine’s AI initiative framed the issues highlighting the benefits and risks that AI presents for health, health care, and biomedical science and identified the implications for a code of conduct. Hastings Center president-designate Vardit Ravitsky is a member of the steering committee.

In a summary of the meeting, which took place in July, Ravitsky underscored the role of bioethics as a facilitator “working toward an implementation that is safe, appropriate, reasonable and wise.”

“Bioethics does not only focus on risks and ‘why not’; there is an opportunity cost in slowing or banning progress that can save lives and improve health care systems,” she said.

Ravitsky asserted that it is time to operationalize the right from the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights to share in scientific advancement and its benefits. “This has been a dormant right—we have failed to operationalize it and use it to promote certain policy approaches, and that is a great shame,” she told the Academy.

The session engaged the Committee in a discussion of the key elements for consideration related to the guardrails for the development and application of AI in health and medicine. Among the key issues discussed were trust as the core of the initiative and how the guidance provided by the project will be used.

The next steering committee meeting will be a webinar this fall.