Justice and the Unhealthy Ecosystem of AI in Health
Although innovation is often driven by individual initiative, innovation in medicine and the health sciences receives various types of social support with the goal of improving the ability of health systems to meet the needs of people. The importance of these needs and the source and nature of these social supports entail that the health of the innovation ecosystem reaches beyond considerations of individual conduct to implicate issues of justice. Despite its generally conservative orientation, stakeholders in medicine and the health sciences have embraced recent advances in artificial intelligence with enthusiasm. Yet the overall benefit to the efficacy, efficiency, and equity of health systems remains uncertain, hampered by conceptual confusion, bandwagons of hype, misaligned incentives, and insufficient practices for assessing the warrant for claims of benefit. After making the case for these claims I suggest some of the ways bioethics might work to improve matters.
This session is offered by the Public Health, Ethics, Law & Policy
Chaired by Elizabeth Fenton and Chris Degeling
This session is offered by the Clinical Ethics Stream
Summary: There is no one recipe or formula for doing empirical bioethics. This makes it challenging to assess what exactly is empirical bioethics, and what kinds of skills and expertise are necessary to carve out space in academia for the field. There are major research and professional development challenges in pursuing empirical bioethics research and educational pathways that engage with diverse disciplinary scholarship, methodologies, and methods. In practice, this can involve navigating numerous disciplinary norms, expectations, and standards that can differ in profound and sometimes troubling ways. Simultaneously, career development pathways, even in a multidisciplinary field like bioethics, remain largely anchored in “home disciplines,” which often come with fixed expectations and duties for how to be a skilled researcher and what constitutes quality research.
How should researchers in bioethics, trained in empirical methods, navigate this? In this panel discussion, both junior and senior scholars will share their experiences in doing empirical bioethics; examining and critically assessing the challenges they have faced in pursuing their unique journeys into and through the discipline, as well as at the margins of other disciplines. The panel will also reflect on a new Getting Started in Empirical Bioethics guide produced by the Empirical Ethics stream leaders; a tool designed as a navigational aid for bioethicists and other researchers interested in empirical methods. Panel members will explore and reflect on how this guide could be applied in shaping bioethics research trajectories and in developing a career anchored in both one’s values and expertise. The panel will be followed by broader interactive and participatory conversations with audience members.
Format: A 90 minute panel session, chaired by Empirical Ethics Stream Co-Leads, Yves Saint James Aquino (yaquino@uow.edu.au) and Hilary Bowman-Smart (hilary.bowman-smart@unisa.edu.au). Further panel members TBC.
This session is offered by the Empirical Ethics Stream and will continue on through the morning tea session
The Hiring Games: Tips for job hunting post-PhD and beyond
Finishing a PhD comes with many stresses, not least of all what you will do for work and money once you submit. How do you get a job? Where do you get a job? What are hiring committees looking for? Are there red and green flags that you need to watch out for in your application? This panel brings together senior academics and those with extensive experience on hiring committees. They will give you all the ins and outs on applying for jobs - who to contact, when to look, and what to do.
This session is offered by the AABHL Students & Early Career Researchers Stream.
Chaired by Craig Stanbury and Sara Attinger
The Teaching Ethics Stream welcomes current and new members to come along to join a conversation about the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on assessment in ethics. The stream leaders will also summarise the streams activities in 2025, including plans for the future.
This session is offered by the Teaching Ethics Stream
Reflecting on our worldviews, values and ethical practices