Jim Flynn and Greg Krabacher Quoted in “What the Pope’s Encyclical on Al Means for Catholic Hospitals, and All of Health Care”

James (Jim) P. Flynn and Gregory J. Krabacher, Members of the Firm, were quoted in STAT News in “What the Pope’s Encyclical on Al Means for Catholic Hospitals, and All of Health Care,” by Brittany Trang.  (Read the full version – subscription required.)

Following is an excerpt:

… I also spoke to Jim Flynn and Greg Krabacher, attorneys at law firm Epstein Becker Green, who just a couple of weeks ago (before the encyclical came out) published an article in the Notre Dame Journal on Emerging Technologies comparing the Trump administration's approach to AI with that of the Catholic church.

Flynn told me that over the past year, he's been hearing about clients' dawning realization that they have to pay attention to the Church's view on more than just, say, end-of-life issues. Faith issues extend to their IT committees, too.

"I think in the past, folks would look at things like chatbots on a provider website and think, 'This allows patients [to] interact more directly in their own language, and there is a feeling of connection between the patient and the institution,’” he said.

But if you take a look at what the pope says in his new teaching, "the encyclical kind of warns about that and says, 'Look, just because it seems human and seems friendly doesn't necessarily mean it's one of those relationships of trust that are really important in medicine,"" Flynn said. (See the encyclical's paragraph 100 for more.)

Krabacher said that people think of AI governance - like the data ethics council above - as an obstacle, or a cost, but the encyclical helps people understand why they should care about governance to begin with.

"There's a number of things that the encyclical does, just in terms of raising up issues and forcing people to look at them - in the same way that jarring news footage forces you to deal with the reality of some atrocity across the other side of the planet," he said. "This is really shining a light on an issue and making very practical suggestions about 'think before you jump,' a little bit."