Abstract

The emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the recent decades has been surprisingly met with monumental acceptance. With its application limitless, it has been introduced or at the verge of being integrated into numerous sectors worldwide. The field of healthcare is no exception, and with digitalization taking hold over its activities, application of artificial intelligence in medicine is not a question of ‘if’, but ‘when’. While ideally people prefer to trust human medical practitioners over machines, artificial intelligence is a gateway to the nearest possibility of achieving perfection while discarding human errors. However, there exists an issue of how morally acceptable it is to trust machine learning over human capabilities and there is an ethical and legal dilemma of subjecting human life to a machine that lacks humanity and sentience over humans who lack precision. With major corporations being invested in artificial intelligence and machine learning pertaining to healthcare, it is no surprise that in near future, it will turn into another commercial pawn to rule over the market. It is imminent that adequate legal framework is introduced for its regulation. The author of this paper has made an attempt to discern the rise of artificial intelligence in the public health sector, identifying its many issues, and the impact it had globally in the detection and control of the spread of COVID-19.

Keywords