Artificial Intelligence, Responsibility, and the Evolving Standard of Care
Artificial intelligence is rapidly embedding itself into clinical, educational, and health‑technology workflows. Yet one question keeps surfacing across disciplines: What does AI actually change about the standard of care, and what does it not?
This topic has come up repeatedly through ongoing conversations with my good friends and collaborators
Alidad Ghiassi, and
Armin St. George from HIA Technology. Across healthcare, life sciences, and applied AI, we keep circling back to the same concern: while AI can meaningfully augment decision‑making, it does not, and should not, displace professional judgment, accountability, or ethical responsibility.
Importantly, HIA Technology is deeply invested in ensuring that standards of care involving AI are not only appropriate, but clearly defined, enforceable, and defensible in real‑world practice. As organizations deploy increasingly sophisticated AI systems, the absence of enforceable standards creates risk, not just for patients and professionals, but for institutions, developers, and adopters alike.
As AI systems become more capable, there is a real danger that confidence in algorithmic outputs outpaces governance, literacy, and legal clarity. Automation bias, opacity, and implicit delegation of responsibility are not theoretical concerns, they are already emerging in practice. The standard of care must therefore evolve adaptively, preserving human oversight while formally recognizing AI as a clinical and operational tool rather than a decision‑maker.
I recently explored this issue formally in the context of healthcare and professional liability, and these discussions with Alidad and Armin have helped sharpen the broader, cross‑sector implications, particularly for organizations actively building, validating, and operationalizing AI systems.
We are now working toward a formal research paper that will examine this more fully, bridging healthcare, AI governance, legal standards, and deployment realities. The goal is not to slow innovation, but to ensure it advances in a way that is clinically sound, legally defensible, and ethically grounded. Please see the attached peer reviewed Professional Communication. If you have questions, comments, or would like to work with me please feel free to email me at
richard.lamb@uga.edu.
More to come.
Rich
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