Governing AI-Driven Health Research: Are IRBs Up to the Task?

Journal: Ethics & human research
Published Date: Mar 1, 2021

Abstract

Many are calling for concrete mechanisms of oversight for health research involving artificial intelligence (AI). In response, institutional review boards (IRBs) are being turned to as a familiar model of governance. Here, we examine the IRB model as a form of ethics oversight for health research that uses AI. We consider the model's origins, analyze the challenges IRBs are facing in the contexts of both industry and academia, and offer concrete recommendations for how these committees might be adapted in order to provide an effective mechanism of oversight for health-related AI research.

Authors

  • Phoebe Friesen
    New York University, New York City, USA.
  • Rachel Douglas-Jones
    Associate professor of anthropological approaches to data and infrastructure, the head of the Technologies in Practice research group, and the codirector of the ETHOS Lab at the IT University of Copenhagen.
  • Mason Marks
    Assistant professor of law at Gonzaga University and the Edmond J. Safra/Petrie-Flom Centers Joint Fellow-in-Residence at Harvard University.
  • Robin Pierce
    Associate professor at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society at the Tilburg Law School at Tilburg University.
  • Katherine Fletcher
    Coordinator of Cyber Security Oxford and the founding administrator of the Computer Science Department Research Ethics Committee in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford.
  • Abhishek Mishra
    Dept of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90024, United States.
  • Jessica Lorimer
    DPhil candidate on the NEUROSEC team in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford.
  • Carissa Véliz
    Associate professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at the Institute for Ethics in AI as well as a tutorial fellow at Hertford College at the University of Oxford.
  • Nina Hallowell
    Codirector of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Health Data Science and a professor at the Ethox Centre and Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities at the University of Oxford.
  • Mackenzie Graham
    Senior research fellow in data ethics at the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities in the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford.
  • Mei Sum Chan
    DPhil student in the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford and a research fellow in the Department of Applied Health Research at University College London.
  • Huw Davies
    Lecturer in education at the School of Education and Sport at the University of Edinburgh.
  • Taj Sallamuddin
    Data protection and information lawyer.

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