Putting the ‘care’ back into ‘healthcare’

Abstract

We believe AI technologies have a significant role to play in the healthcare domain. Before they can be implemented, however, we must first recognise and address at least two formal deficits in state-of-the-art AI systems: the causality deficit and the care deficit. When making causal inferences and reasoning about causal relationships (on the diagnostic front) and assisting, monitoring, and providing companionship for patients (on the care-giving front), the optimal level of human-level performance far outstrips the optimal level of AI-level performance (Chen, 2019). An understand- ing of the current state of global healthcare, a recognition of the need to address both the causality deficit and the care deficit in the design of AI systems, and an appreciation of the value of human-oriented AI will allow us to rise to the challenge of putting the ‘care’ back into ‘healthcare’.