AI-ship: the New States of Being (Harvard)

AI-Ship: the New States of Being is an interdisciplinary s exhibition engaging the general public in reflecting on the ethical, legal and social issues of the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) in health. The exhibition seeks to create a dialogue between artists and bioethicists as well as to foster a public reflection on the cutting-edge topic of AI-ship.

The application of AI in health is expected to increase and transform the way we diagnose, prevent, and treat illness, not to mention revolutionize the way we interact with technologies. As AI offers great potential for improving healthcare, it is crucial to consider the broad spectrum of ethical challenges raised by these new technologies. A contributing factor to the ethical challenges of AI is the complexity of the relationships that individuals develop with it, potentially resulting in mistrust and fear in the public discourse around AI’s impacts on human relationships.

These relational impacts, both within and outside of the healthcare context, go beyond scientific improvements into psychological, moral, and political changes. To correctly respond to the challenges raised by AI requires all of society to be involved in answering AI-ship. The goal is to cut through the increasingly polarized public debates regarding AI, often fueled by sensationalism and fear mongering on the rise of “Dr. AI”, the growing distance between patients and their human healthcare providers, the associated feeling of being a number and not a person, and the increased reliance on robots for companionship and as caretakers.

Through an art/science exhibition, the project seeks to stimulate the general public in providing their own reflections and answers to various questions raised in the scientific literature—e.g., What are the implications of patients developing relation-ships with autonomous robots giving them care? Are algorithms new healthcare agents? Can patients trust them like they do with their clinicians? How will we react to AI’s potential intrusion in the privacy of daily life? How do patients experience their AI quantified-self? Will we witness a transformation of the relation-ships between humans as dependency towards AI increase? Could/should sexbots be used for therapeutic purposes? What are the implications of humans developing kin-ship or mistrust towards AI?

Leadership Team
Jean-Christophe
Bélisle-Pipon, PhD
Nathalie Voarino, MA
Glenn Cohen, JD
Collaborators
Vincent Couture, PhD
Vardit Ravisky, PhD
Marc-Antoine Dilhac, PhD
Exhibition Curated By
Aseman Sabet
Exhibition Dates
Montréal, Sept-Dec, 2019
Boston, Spring 2020
Geneva, Fall 2020