The Doctor and the Algorithm Promise, Peril, and the Future of Health AI

For years, technologists and computer scientists have promised an AI revolution that would transform the very basis of how we imagine and administer modern medicine. AI-driven advancements in medical error rates, diagnostic accuracy, or disease outbreak detection could potentially save thousands of lives. But health AI also carries the potential for exacerbating deep systemic biases if left unchecked.

The Doctor and the Algorithm combines insights from science and technology studies, critical algorithm studies, and public interest informatics to better understand the promise and peril of health AI. The book draws on case studies in automated diagnostics, algorithmic pain measurement, AI-driven drug discovery, and death prediction to investigate how health AI is made, promoted, and justified. It explores the enthusiastic promises of health AI marketing communication and medical futurism while also analyzing the inequitable outcomes new AI technology often creates for already marginalized communities. Finally, the book closes with specific recommendations for regulatory frameworks that might support more ethical and equitable approaches to health AI in the future.

Interweaving textual analysis and original informatics, The Doctor and the Algorithm offers a sobering analysis of the promise of medical AI against the real and unintended consequences that deep medicine can bring for patients, providers, and public health alike.

S. Scott Graham, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written extensively about communication in health science and policy. He is the author of The Politics of Pain Medicine (University of Chicago Press, 2015) and numerous
articles in journals ranging from the Journal of Medical Humanities and Rhetoric of Health & Medicine to Plos-One and the Annals of Internal Medicine. His research has been reported on in The New York Times, US News & World Report, Science, Health Day, AI in Health Care, and Scientific Inquirer.