A case for ethical continuity in the age of medical AI

Abstract

Medicine has long wrestled with a form of professional hubris, often termed a “God complex”, in which the conviction of noble intent is mistaken for a guarantee of patient safety. History has repeatedly shown the limits of that belief. Each breakthrough, from anesthesia to antibiotics, has carried unforeseen harms that demanded restraint, oversight, and a commitment to safety proportional to clinical risk. Medical artificial intelligence now renews that challenge, this time accelerated by commercial pressures, amplified by scale, and driven largely by forces outside medicine. This commentary calls for ethical continuity, extending the discipline that made medicine trustworthy into the digital age. We outline a risk stratification framework consisting of: risk–benefit assessment, operationalizing accuracy thresholds, pathways for human care escalation, and continuous post-market accountability. Behavioral health sits at the front line of this transformation, testing whether medicine’s ethical discipline can be incorporated into the digital age.

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