AI AND ETHICS: IN THE CLINIC

This course examines the ethical dimensions of artificial intelligence in healthcare, emphasizing translational ethics—the movement from identifying ethical concerns to proposing and defending justifiable, real-world solutions. Intended for clinicians, administrators, leaders, and researchers, the course explores how AI is impacting
patient care, clinical decision-making, health system operations, and clinical research. Students will engage with a broad spectrum of use cases, including AI in imaging specialties, predictive models for diagnoses and future health states, intraoperative support, large language models, mental health chatbots, and digital twins. Core themes include transparency, accuracy, impact, safety, governance, privacy, accountability, and the distribution of burdens and benefits. Seminar-style sessions are built around presentations, discussions, and interactive analysis, enabling participants to apply ethical frameworks to real clinical contexts. By course completion, students will be equipped to critically evaluate AI applications and contribute to strategies and policies that ensure safe, effective, and ethically
responsible deployment.

As part of a nascent but rapidly developing field, this course situates health AI ethics within the broader principles of patient-centered clinical ethics, equipping students to think critically about how emerging technologies intersect with core values of patient care. By engaging with both current applications and future concerns, the course helps learners bridge foundational ethical concepts with the novel challenges posed by AI solutions in diverse clinical settings—from imaging and predictive analytics to mental health support and operational tools. Within the program curriculum, the course complements broader training in Bioethics by focusing specifically on applied, translational ethics, ensuring students are prepared not only to identify ethical issues but also to propose and defend actionable solutions that can guide clinical practice, institutional policy, and system-level decision-making.

This course is offered as an elective within the program and is open to Bioethics students and students from other fields or Columbia University programs with permission. No specific competencies, prerequisite coursework, or prior knowledge in the discipline are required; students from diverse professional and academic backgrounds are welcome. The course is delivered fully online in a seminar format, fostering interac