Beyond ‘AI for Social Good’ (AI4SG): social transformations—not tech-fixes—for health equity

ABSTRACT

This paper reflects on proliferating AI for Social Good (AI4SG) initiatives, with an eye to public health and health equity. It notes that many AI4SG initiatives are shaped by the same corporate entities that incubate AI technologies, beyond democratic control, and stand to profit monetarily from their deployment. Such initiatives often pre-frame systemic social and environmental problems in tech-centric ways, while suggesting that addressing such problems hinges on more or better data. They thereby perpetuate incomplete, distorted models of social change that claim to be ‘data-driven’. In the process, AI4SG initiatives may obscure or ‘ethics wash’ all the other uses of big data analytics and AI that more routinely serve private interests and exacerbate social inequalities. As a case in point, it discusses the prominence of health-related applications in AI and big data fields, alongside the politics of more ‘upstream’ versus ‘downstream’ health interventions.

KEYWORDS:

• Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• AI for Social Good (AI4SG)
• AI Ethics
• AI Governance
• Precision Medicine
• Social Justice
• Public Health
• Health Equity

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to Shunryu Colin Garvey and the anonymous reviewers, who all contributed extremely helpful, generous feedback on this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cheryl Holzmeyer

Cheryl Holzmeyer is a sociologist who completed her Ph.D. at UC-Berkeley. She is currently a Research Fellow affiliated with the Institute for Social Transformation at UC-Santa Cruz. Her research focuses on the intersections of science, technology, social justice, and health equity.