Industry 4.0
Vol. 11 (2026), Issue 2, pg(s) 83-86

SOCIETY & ”INDUSTRY 4.0”

AI ethics education as a tool to minimize risks in medicine

  • 1 Department of Social and Preventive Medicine and Disaster medicine, Faculty of Public Health „Prof. Dr. Tzekomir Vodenitcharov, PhD”, Medical University of Sofia, Sofia, Bulgaria
  • 2 Department of Bioethics, Faculty of Public Health „Prof. Dr. Tzekomir Vodenitcharov, PhD”, Medical University of Sofia, Sofia, Bulgaria

Abstract

The rapid integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into medical practice has created unprecedented opportunities for clinical decision support, diagnostics, and patient communication. At the same time, it has introduced new categories of risk, including hallucinated outputs, biased recommendations, privacy breaches, and overreliance by inexperienced practitioners. These risks are amplified in high‑ stakes environments such as medicine, where erroneous AI‑ generated information can directly impact patient safety. This paper argues that robust AI ethics education is an essential risks mitigation strategy for future healthcare professionals. Drawing on the results of a survey conducted among medical students, the study examines perceptions of AI use in medicine, the perceived importance of AI ethics education, and expectations regarding its content. Respondents showed clear optimism about the role of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in medicine, with strong majorities agreeing that it can positively change clinical practice, improve patient care, and find useful applications. At the same time, the high number of undecided responses (especially regarding patient‑ care quality) reflects ongoing uncertainty about reliability and safety. Students also strongly emphasized the need for structured AI ethics education, as most agreed that it raises awareness of ethical issues and should involve multidisciplinary expertise. Across all proposed topics, including data privacy, bias, explainability, safety, fairness, and autonomy, students rated the relevance of ethics-related content as high, indicating a clear expectation that medical curricula must prepare them to navigate the respective risks and limitations. By synthesizing these findings with current debates on AI governance and medical safety, the paper positions ethics‑ driven education as a foundational component of responsible AI deployment in healthcare. The paper argues for embedding AI ethics directly into medical curricula as a proactive risk‑ mitigation tool. The contribution of this work lies in demonstrating, through empirical evidence, that future clinicians recognize both the promise and the
dangers of AI in medicine.

Keywords

References

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