The Epistemic Role of AI Decision Support Systems: Neither Superiors, Nor Inferiors, Nor Peers

Despite the importance of discussions over the epistemic role that artificially intelligent decision support systems ought to play, there is currently a lack of these discussions in both the AI literature and the epistemology literature. My goal in this paper is to rectify this by proposing an account of the epistemic role of AI decision support systems in medicine and discussing what this epistemic role means with regard to how these systems ought to be utilized. In particular, I argue that AI decision support systems are not epistemic superiors, inferiors, or peers. Instead, I recommend that they be classified in an epistemic category of their own, as “epistemic nudges.” With my proposed account of the epistemic role of AI decision support systems, I aim to provide answers the following two questions: (1) How ought disagreements between a clinician and an AI decision support system be handled? (2) How ought responsibility and accountability be allocated when an AI decision support system used by a human clinician in decision-making results in harm?