Tudor-Ștefan Rotaru

By Tudor-Ștefan Rotaru

There is a gap of twenty-four centuries between us and the Greek philosopher Plato. But what he had to say about illness, healing and the human being can be unexpectedly relevant in contemporary medical ethics. We argue that the contemporary principles of autonomy and beneficence can be revisited by means of platonic philosophy. We present an old and consistent idea of care which includes the empowerment of people in choosing the good by means of a virtuous character. We connect this idea to the contemporary notion of autonomy. We also show how a holistic approach was present for a long time in our cultural history. We argue that, despite its almost definitive loss, holism can and should be present in revisiting the principle of beneficence. For both holism and care, we provide samples of philosophical history. We conclude that an autonomous choice should be revisited as a wise choice and that medical beneficence should be reconsidered as holistic.

Part of the book: Bioethics in Medicine and Society

By Tudor-Ștefan Rotaru and Ciprian Amariei

There are many definitions of what an artificial intelligence (AI) system is. This chapter emphasises the characteristics of AI to mimic human behaviour in the process of solving complex tasks in real-world environments. After introducing different types of AI systems, the chapter continues with a brief analysis of the distinction between research into what an AI system is in its inner structure and research into the uses of AI. Since much literature is already devoted to the ethical concerns surrounding the use of AI, this chapter addresses the problem of accountability with respect to opaque human-like AI systems. In addition, the chapter explains how research ethics in AI is fundamentally different from research ethics in any other field. Often, the goal of engineers in this field is to build powerful autonomous systems that tend to be opaque. The aim is therefore to build entities whose inner workings become unknown to their creators as soon as these entities start the learning process. A split accountability model is proposed to address this specificity.

Part of the book: Ethics