Tackling Structural Injustices

Abstract

In today's world, Artificial Intelligence plays a central role in many decision-making processes. However, its use can lead to structural and epistemic injustices— especially in the context of health. In 2019, for example, an algorithm used millions of times in American hospitals favored White patients over Black patients. The algorithm was used to predict the likelihood that patients would need additional medical care. Skin color itself was not considered as a variable. What was taken into account was rather the development of costs in the health sector. This correlated negatively with the level of health care costs in the underlying data sets. For a variety of reasons, Black patients had, on average, lower health care costs than White patients with the same medical conditions (Vartan 2019). In another case, it was observed that newborns with a positive screening result for rare diseases were diagnosed and treated later if they were patients of color (Zavala et al. 2021). What becomes evident in both cases with respect to different technologies is that there is a link between the use of new technologies and experiences of injustice for (different) marginalized groups that has not been sufficiently considered so far (Wachter 2022).<br /> Experiences of marginalization and invisibility based on specific characteristics such as skin color, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, socio-economic background, and others pose major challenges to questions of justice in dealing with new technologies such as novel genetic tests or algorithmic decisions as in the examples. Depending on the characteristic and the value attached to it, people have different experiences. Experience is not just an abstract category here. It also refers to specific claims to be visible in public space and how difficult it can sometimes be to assert rights to good treatment (Braun and Krutzinna 2022). In this short paper, we argue how central it is to focus on negotiations of social recognition from an ethics of life forms perspective in order to combat the experiences of injustices caused by new forms of technology.