776 Artificial intelligence in healthcare in the light of statements by the German Ethics Council

Hüdepohl 6 Artificial intelligence in healthcare in the light of statements by the German Ethics Council 6.1 PreliminariesIn spring 2023, the German Ethics Council (GEC) issued a comprehensive opinion entitled 'Human and Machine -Challenges posed by Artificial Intelligence' [1] on the ethical aspects of its diverse areas of application.With this opinion, the Ethics Council was responding to a formal request from the German Bundestag to discuss the challenges of artificial intelligence in a fundamental way and to develop recommendations for any regulatory requirements.As a result, the statement first addresses the technical and philosophical foundations of such recommendations in detail and discusses key concepts (artificial intelligence, human intelligence and reason, action and responsibility), anthropological aspects of the human-machine relationship and their implications for human-technology relations.The central ethical implication is to realize that the central yardstick by which the most diverse interactions between humans and machines -the Council deliberately avoids the otherwise common concept of human-machine interactions in order to falsely ascribe the status of an actor to machines -are to be ethically assessed is the answer to the question of whether these interactions ultimately extend or diminish human autonomy and authorship.[1: ch.4.4.]The Ethics Council quickly realized that this insight would be discussed in detail in various fields of action.In addition to the areas of (school) education, public communication and opinion-forming as well as public administration (with a focus on social services), the opinion focuses in particular on medicine [1: ch.5].Of course, the German Ethics Council has dealt with specific issues relating to artificial intelligence in two other opinions in the last two terms of office: firstly in its opinion on 'Big data and Health -Data Sovereignty as the Shaping of Informational freedom' [3] and secondly in its opinion on 'Robotics for good care' [2].The statement on 'Mensch und Maschine' (Human and Machine) repeatedly refers to both.For this reason alone, they are also included in the following analysis.