PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Pruski, Michal
TI  - Materiality and practicality: a response to - are clinicians ethically obligated to disclose their use of medical machine learning systems to patients?
AID  - 10.1136/jme-2024-110371
DP  - 2024 Aug 30
TA  - Journal of Medical Ethics
PG  - jme-2024-110371
4099  - http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2024/08/30/jme-2024-110371.short
4100  - http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2024/08/30/jme-2024-110371.full
AB  - In his recent paper Hatherley discusses four reasons given to support mandatory disclosure of the use of machine learning technologies in healthcare, and provides counters to each of these reasons. While I agree with Hatherley’s conclusion that such disclosures should not be mandatory (at least not in an upfront fashion), I raise some problems with his counters to the materiality argument. Finally, I raise another potential problem that exists in a democratic society: that even if Hatherley’s (and other authors who share his conclusions) arguments are sound, in a democratic society the simple fact that most people might wish for such disclosures to be made might be an enough compelling reason to make such disclosures mandatory.