ABSTRACT
We live in an increasingly “data-driven” world where artificial intelligence (AI) and associated applications are integrated into daily life in ways that are often seamless and non-transparent. These technologies rely on massive amounts of data continuously collected through surveillant platforms like electronic health records, cell phone GPS, search engines, credit cards, traffic cameras, smart speakers, and social media. Almost anywhere we practice, nurses and other healers are now challenged to manage the continued expansion of big data, AI, and related technologies in our personal lives, clinical care, and the public sphere. It would follow that we are also called to support the communities we work with and for to navigate a new era of AI for health care. Nurses have been told repeatedly by health tech industry representatives, researchers, entrepreneurs, governmental agencies, and our own professional associations that AI and big data are the future of health and care. Most of us trained in the clinical professions have received almost no specific preparation on how to engage with or critically analyze the use or abuse of these technologies and especially, how to protect, defend, or heal ourselves or others from actual and potential harms. In this essay, I examine the veracity and origins of recent claims that AI is an imperative for the future of health and care. I critically analyze compatibility of current AI and big data practices with values and goals of emancipatory nursing praxis. Drawing on intellectual labor and advocacy of scholars and communities already working to address power and injustice in this space, and my own experiences as a nurse, inventor, and data scientist, I outline ten commitments to new and more liberatory futures.
