Artificial Doctoring

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores how the expanding availability and marketing of direct-to-consumer (DTC) artificial intelligence (AI) health applications affect potential users’ autonomy. Section 1 introduces the common claim that these products can democratize health information and promote users’ autonomy. Section 2 provides a brief overview of various purposes and categories of DTC AI health applications, illustrated with examples of platforms currently on the market. Utilizing the concept of relational autonomy, Section 3 explores how these technologies affect (prospective) users’ self-governance, self-determination, and self-authorization. It examines how the broader social phenomenon of self-quantification via indefinite tracking changes our practical identities and may ironically reinforce medical dominance that can further reduce (prospective) patients’ power. Drawing on lessons learned from other DTC health products such as genetic tests, this section warns of the possibility that DTC AI health monitoring may alienate and marginalize people’s embodied experience in ways that compromise their self-identity rather than promoting self-knowledge.