Emanuele Ratti

We provide an analysis of theory-ladenness in machine learning (ML) in science, where ‘theory’ (that we call ‘domain-theory’) refers to the domain knowledge of the scientific discipline where ML is used. By constructing an account of ML models based on a comparison with phenomenological models, we show (against recent trends in philosophy of science) that ML model-building is mostly indifferent to domain-theory, even if the model remains theory-laden in a weak sense, which we call theory-infection . These claims, we argue, have far-reaching consequences for the transferability of ML across scientific disciplines, and shift the priorities of the debate on theory-ladenness in ML from descriptive to normative .

The past few years have witnessed an increasing use of machine learning (ML) systems in science. Paul Humphreys has argued that, because of specific characteristics of ML systems, human scientists are pushed out of the loop of science. In this chapter, I investigate to what extent this is true. First, I express these concerns in terms of what I call epistemic control. I identify two conditions for epistemic control, called tracking and tracing, drawing on works in philosophy of technology. With this new understanding of the problem, I then argue against Humphreys pessimistic view. Finally, I construct a more nuanced view of epistemic control in ML-based science.

Background: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being designed, tested, and in many cases actively employed in almost every aspect of healthcare from primary care to public health. It is by now well established that any application of AI carries an attendant responsibility to consider the ethical and societal aspects of its development, deployment and impact. However, in the rapidly developing field of AI, developments such as machine learning, neural networks, generative AI, and large language models have the potential to raise new and distinct ethical and social issues compared to, for example, automated data processing or more ‘basic’ algorithms. Methods: This article presents a scoping review of the ethical and social issues pertaining to AI in healthcare, with a novel two-pronged design. One strand of the review (SR1) consists of a broad review of the academic literature restricted to a recent timeframe (2021–23), to better capture up to date developments and debates. The second strand (SR2) consists of a narrow review, limited to prior systematic and scoping reviews on the ethics of AI in healthcare, but extended over a longer timeframe (2014–2024) to capture longstanding and recurring themes and issues in the debate. This strategy provides a practical way to deal with an increasingly voluminous literature on the ethics of AI in healthcare in a way that accounts for both the depth and evolution of the literature. Results: SR1 captures the heterogeneity of audience, medical fields, and ethical and societal themes (and their tradeoffs) raised by AI systems. SR2 provides a comprehensive picture of the way scoping reviews on ethical and societal issues in AI in healthcare have been conceptualized, as well as the trends and gaps identified. Conclusion: Our analysis shows that the typical approach to ethical issues in AI, which is based on the appeal to general principles, becomes increasingly unlikely to do justice to the nuances and specificities of the ethical and societal issues raised by AI in healthcare, as the technology moves from abstract debate and discussion to real world situated applications and concerns in healthcare settings.

Background: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being designed, tested, and in many cases actively employed in almost every aspect of healthcare from primary care to public health. It is by now well established that any application of AI carries an attendant responsibility to consider the ethical and societal aspects of its development, deployment and impact. However, in the rapidly developing field of AI, developments such as machine learning, neural networks, generative AI, and large language models have the potential to raise new and distinct ethical and social issues compared to, for example, automated data processing or more ‘basic’ algorithms. Methods: This article presents a scoping review of the ethical and social issues pertaining to AI in healthcare, with a novel two-pronged design. One strand of the review (SR1) consists of a broad review of the academic literature restricted to a recent timeframe (2021-23), to better capture up to date developments and debates. The second strand (SR2) consists of a narrow review, limited to prior systematic and scoping reviews on the ethics of AI in healthcare, but extended over a longer timeframe (2014-2024) to capture longstanding and recurring themes and issues in the debate. This strategy provides a practical way to deal with an increasingly voluminous literature on the ethics of AI in healthcare in a way that accounts for both the depth and evolution of the literature. Results: SR1 captures the heterogeneity of audience, medical fields, and ethical and societal themes (and their tradeoffs) raised by AI systems. SR2 provides a comprehensive picture of the way scoping reviews on ethical and societal issues in AI in healthcare have been conceptualized, as well as the trends and gaps identified. Conclusion: Our analysis shows that the typical approach to ethical issues in AI, which is based on the appeal to general principles, becomes increasingly unlikely to do justice to the nuances and specificities of the ethical and societal issues raised by AI in healthcare, as the technology moves from abstract debate and discussion to real world situated applications and concerns in healthcare settings.

In the past few years, calls for integrating ethics modules in engineering curricula have multiplied. Despite this positive trend, a number of issues with these ‘embedded’ programs remains. First, learning goals are underspecified. A second limitation is the conflation of different dimensions under the same banner, in particular confusion between ethics curricula geared towards addressing the ethics of individual conduct and curricula geared towards addressing ethics at the societal level. In this article, we propose a tripartite framework to overcome these difficulties. Our framework analytically decomposes an ethics module into three dimensions. First, there is the ethical dimension, which pertains to the learning goals. Second, there is the moral dimension, which addresses the moral relevance of engineers’ conduct. Finally, there is the political dimension, which scales up issues of moral relevance at the civic level. All in all, our framework has two advantages. First, it provides analytic clarity, i.e. it enables course instructors to locate ethical dilemmas in either the moral or political realm and to make use of the tools and resources from moral and/or political philosophy. Second, it depicts a comprehensive ethical training, which enables students to both reason about moral issues in the abstract, and to socially contextualize potential solutions.

In the past few years, calls for integrating ethics modules in engineering curricula have multiplied. Despite this positive trend, a number of issues with these embedded programs remains. First, learning goals are underspecified. A second limitation is the conflation of different dimensions under the same banner, in particular confusion between ethics curricula geared towards addressing the ethics of individual conduct and curricula geared towards addressing ethics at the societal level. In this article, we propose a tripartite framework to overcome these difficulties. Our framework analytically decomposes an ethics module into three dimensions. First, there is the ethical dimension, which pertains to the learning goals. Second, there is the moral dimension, which addresses the moral relevance of engineers conduct. Finally, there is the political dimension, which scales up issues of moral relevance at the civic level. All in all, our framework has two advantages. First, it provides analytic clarity, i.e. it enables course instructors to locate ethical dilemmas in either the moral or political realm and to make use of the tools and resources from moral and political philosophy. Second, it depicts a comprehensive ethical training, which enables students to both reason about moral issues in the abstract, and to socially contextualize potential solutions.

In the science and values literature, scholars have shown how science is influenced and shaped by values, often in opposition to the ‘value free’ ideal of science. In this paper, we aim to contribute to the science and values literature by showing that the relation between science and values flows not only from values into scientific practice, but also from (allegedly neutral) science to values themselves. The extant literature in the ‘science and values’ field focuses by and large on reconstructing, post hoc, how values have influenced science; our reconstruction of the case studies, instead, aims to show that scientific concepts and methodstoo, because of specific identifiable characteristics,can promote some values rather than (or at the expense of) others. We explain this bidirectional relation in analogy to debates on the normativity of technical artifacts and on feminist approaches in science, and we illustrate our claims with cases from the health sciences and machine learning. While our arguments in this paper also draw on post hoc reconstructions, we intend to show where, in the science in the making, we should engage not only with the question whether a practice is value-laden, but also how specific conceptual and methodological choices can influence values down the road. All in all, these considerations expand the ways in which philosophers can contribute to more value-aware scientific practices.

A recent article by Herzog provides a much-needed integration of ethical and epistemological arguments in favor of explicable AI (XAI) in medicine. In this short piece, I suggest a way in which its epistemological intuition of XAI as “explanatory interface” can be further developed to delineate the relation between AI tools and scientific research.