Harrison is a medical researcher trying to find a cure for a disease. He has a team of hundreds of people carrying out medical testing.
Recent developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) mean that a computer program could do the work of dozens of researchers in a much shorter time. Harrison decides to increase his use of Artificial Intelligence.
Discuss the issues surrounding this decision. Consider the following in your answer:
- ethical issues
- legal issues [6]
How to answer this question
- Consider each issue first, can you think of any immediate positive and negatives?
- Try not to start writing the first thing that comes into your head, planning will help achieve higher marks and manage your time spent on the question
- Remember, there is not a prescriptive list of factors you need to mention, they are looking at how you can use what you have learnt about the issues and apply in a variety of contexts
Indicative Content
- Ethical
- Replacing people with machines
- Loss of jobs
- Community will suffer
- Working will be completed faster
- May find a cure faster
- More reliable calculations
- Save more lives
- Legal
- More secure than people seeing personal data
- May be at risk if not backed up
- May be at risk of threats e.g. hackers
- Who is responsible if there is an error
Possible response
Ethical
- Replacing people – Using more AI will mean people losing jobs. Losing jobs will lead to higher unemployment.
- Cure faster – Using more AI could lead to a cure being found faster which mean many lives could be saved.
Legal
- Secure – Using more AI could improve the security of the patient data being used. Using AI means people do not see the data, improving patient privacy.
- Hacks – Using more AI could increase the chance of hackers targeting the network, increasing the chance of data breaches and putting patient data at more risk.
In conclusion, I think Harrison is right to increase his use in AI as the ultimate goal of his work is to help find a cure for a disease which could save lives.