#10 | In Light of Medical Machine Learning Technologies in Sub-Saharan Africa: African Agency Reconsidered

27 May 2024 | 15h00 | Online

rTAIM (Rebuilding Trust in AI Medicine) 
Monthly Seminars

Seminar #10
In Light of Medical Machine Learning Technologies in Sub-Saharan Africa: African Agency Reconsidered

| Edmund Terem Ugar *

#Seminar 10: The growing application of machine learning techniques in the second decade of the present century has made artificial intelligence to play a more significant role in medicine and, increasingly, in public health. Image recognition, in particular, has become extremely effective, and clinicians increasingly rely on machine learning technologies for clinical diagnosis and prognosis of medical conditions. While these technologies have proven to be relevant and efficient in carrying out medical diagnosis, in this talk, I argue that they threaten an integral aspect of what constitutes human agency for Africans – interpersonal relationships. Overreliance on machine learning technology for clinical diagnosis and recommendations may diminish the values of interpersonal relationships of identity and solidarity between patients and doctors in the sub-Sahel. I show how vital these normative values are in the making of a person and their agency within the sub-Saharan African value system.

 
* Short Bio: Edmund Terem Ugar is a doctoral candidate in Philosophy at the University of Johannesburg, a research fellow at the Centre for the Philosophy of Epidemiology, Medicine and Public Health at Durham University, and a research coordinator at the University of Johannesburg Centre for Africa-China Studies. His research lies broadly within the Philosophy of Social Technologies within Medical and Healthcare Domains.

rTAIM (Rebuilding Trust in AI Medicine) Monthly Seminars are online seminars open to anyone in the world that would like to present her/his current research on topics associated with the main theme of the project.

rTAIM Seminars: https://ifilosofia.up.pt/activities/rtaim-seminars

Organisation:
Steven S. Gouveia (MLAG/IF)
Mind, Language and Action Group (MLAG)
Instituto de Filosofia da Universidade do Porto – UIDB/00502/2020
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)