# Breaking Bad News in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Algorithmic Medicine: An Exploration of Disclosure and its Ethical Justification using the Hedonic Calculus

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.01431 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.01431/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 3 of its 151 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Jun 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Improving Palliative Care with Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.06402/) (2017)
- [Morality, Machines and the Interpretation Problem: A Value-based, Wittgensteinian Approach to Building Moral Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.02728/) (2021)
- [Have a break from making decisions, have a MARS: The Multi-valued Action Reasoning System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.03283/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Minimum Levels of Interpretability for Artificial Moral Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.00660/) (2023)
- [Developing moral AI to support antimicrobial decision making](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.06327/) (2022)
- [If our aim is to build morality into an artificial agent, how might we begin to go about doing so?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08295/) (2023)
- [Can a Machine be Conscious? Towards Universal Criteria for Machine Consciousness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15369/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

An appropriate ethical framework around the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare has become a key desirable with the increasingly widespread deployment of this technology. Advances in AI hold the promise of improving the precision of outcome prediction at the level of the individual. However, the addition of these technologies to patient-clinician interactions, as with any complex human interaction, has potential pitfalls. While physicians have always had to carefully consider the ethical background and implications of their actions, detailed deliberations around fast-moving technological progress may not have kept up. We use a common but key challenge in healthcare interactions, the disclosure of bad news (likely imminent death), to illustrate how the philosophical framework of the 'Felicific Calculus' developed in the 18th century by Jeremy Bentham, may have a timely quasi-quantitative application in the age of AI. We show how this ethical algorithm can be used to assess, across seven mutually exclusive and exhaustive domains, whether an AI-supported action can be morally justified.