Reflections on epistemological aspects of artificial intelligence during the COVID-19 pandemic

Angela A R de Sá; Jairo D Carvalho; Eduardo L M Naves

doi:10.1007/s00146-021-01315-9

Reflections on epistemological aspects of artificial intelligence during the COVID-19 pandemic

AI Soc. 2021 Nov 27:1-8. doi: 10.1007/s00146-021-01315-9. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Angela A R de Sá¹, Jairo D Carvalho², Eduardo L M Naves¹

Affiliations

¹ Assistive Technology Group, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Federal University of Uberlândia, Uberlândia, Brazil.
² Technologies Study Group, Faculty of Philosophy, Federal University of Uberlândia, Uberlândia, Brazil.

Abstract

Artificial intelligence plays an important role and has been used by several countries as a health strategy in an attempt to understand, control and find a cure for the disease caused by Coronavirus. These intelligent systems can assist in accelerating the process of developing antivirals for Coronavirus and in predicting new variants of this virus. For this reason, much research on COVID-19 has been developed with the aim of contributing to new discoveries about the Coronavirus. However, there are some epistemological aspects about the use of AI in this pandemic period of Covid-19 that deserve to be discussed and need reflections. In this scenario, this article presents a reflection on the two epistemological aspects faced by the COVID-19 pandemic: (1) The epistemological aspect resulting from the use of patient data to fill the knowledge base of intelligent systems; (2) the epistemological problem arising from the dependence of health professionals on the results/diagnoses issued by intelligent systems. In addition, we present some epistemological challenges to be implemented in a pandemic period.

Keywords: Artificial intelligence; COVID-19; Espistemology; Intelligent systems.