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The Artificial Levite: AI and the Temptation to “Pass By” the Patient

Healthcare stands to gain much from the integration of artificial intelligence (AI). We must, as a society, decide how it should be ethically implemented into these human-led sectors. After first examining AI from a Catholic perspective at the general scale using Antiqua et Nova , this essay shifts its focus to the implementation of AI in healthcare. With the gaze of the Good Samaritan as a foundation, this essay establishes relational care as a core principle of a Catholic healthcare system that AI threatens to…

By the Truvace desk2 min read1 sourcePeer-reviewedTRV-2026-2164· cite & verify
The Artificial Levite: AI and the Temptation to “Pass By” the Patient
The Tyranny of Numbers - How e-Health Record Transparency Affects Patients’ Health Perceptions and Conversations with Physicians by Benedikte Møller Kristensen, John Brodersen, Alexandra Ryborg Jønsson. CC BY-SA 4.0 · https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0

In brief

This peer-reviewed essay in The Linacre Quarterly considers how artificial intelligence should be ethically built into healthcare from a Catholic perspective. It starts from the Vatican document Antiqua et Nova, then uses the Good Samaritan as a lens for why relational care matters in medicine.

The essay matters because it frames AI adoption as a choice about whether technology preserves or displaces the human relationship between patient and clinician. It is an argument and ethical analysis, so its predictions about AI's effects remain anticipatory rather than measured outcomes.

Main points

  1. The essay applies a Catholic ethical framework, drawing on Antiqua et Nova, to AI in healthcare.
  2. It names relational care as a core principle that AI threatens to erode.
  3. Electronic health records are used as a historical parallel for technology shifting care away from relationality.
  4. Ambient AI scribes are examined as a test case of disciplined, relationship-enhancing integration.

The problem

Anticipated AI implementation in healthcare is argued likely to repeat the EHR pattern of shifting care away from relationality, eroding the patient-provider relationship at the core of Catholic healthcare.

The rundown

The paper begins with a general Catholic assessment of AI and then narrows to healthcare. It uses the Good Samaritan's gaze as its foundation for what attentive care involves.

It draws on the distinction in Antiqua et Nova between AI that enhances the patient-provider relationship and AI that replaces it. EHR adoption serves as the cautionary precedent for how technology reshaped care.

Ambient AI scribes serve as the example of how relationship-enhancing integration could look. The abstract says healthcare stands to gain much from AI but gives no specific measured results.

Sources

  1. Peer-reviewedThe Linacre Quarterly2026-10-21

The debate