AI ethics in computational psychiatry: From the neuroscience of consciousness to the ethics of consciousness

Artificial intelligence methods used in computational psychiatry raise ethical issues including fairness, data ownership, and privacy. Beyond these, AI applications may transform how we conceive of autonomy and privacy, and computational psychiatry may change how mental disorders are categorized and classified. Since many mental disorders involve disturbed conscious experiences, successful computational psychiatry applications could improve understanding of such disorders. However, even successful applications may fail to account for all aspects of disordered conscious experiences. The authors discuss both prospects and pitfalls of these transformative effects.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Methods used in artificial intelligence (AI) overlap with methods used in computational psychiatry (CP). Hence, considerations from AI ethics are also relevant to ethical discussions of CP. Ethical issues include, among others, fairness and data ownership and protection. Apart from this, morally relevant issues also include potential transformative effects of applications of AI—for instance, with respect to how we conceive of autonomy and privacy. Similarly, successful applications of CP may have transformative effects on how we categorise and classify mental disorders and mental health. Since many mental disorders go along with disturbed conscious experiences, it is desirable that successful applications of CP improve our understanding of disorders involving disruptions in conscious experience. Here, we discuss prospects and pitfalls of transformative effects that CP may have on our understanding of mental disorders. In particular, we examine the concern that even successful applications of CP may fail to take all aspects of disordered conscious experiences into account.