Abstract
Shushana Zuboff, a Harvard professor, in her book – “ The Age of Surveillance Capitalism”, asserted the need to critically analyse a new economic order that extracts the lived experiences of humans in their life which is now intrinsically digital, as ‘ free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction and sales’. In this incontrovertible profit-hungry world economy, surveillance-based ecosystems and use of artificial intelligence, has grappled its way to all sector of society and social institution, be it healthcare, finance, labour market or education. It’s inevitable and omnipresent and implausible to exist without partaking in a digitalised economy. In the west its growth has been substantial and dangerous; in the developed countries the progression has been slower but inescapable. India, a significant player in the global economy and tech-markets, is catching up to the new ways of digitalised living fast. Healthcare in India is at stage where the bridge between urban and rural areas is staggering, even in urban areas; the difference between affordability of better healthcare among different economic classes is atrocious. While privatisation can supposedly and theoretically have economic benefits that justifies its enforcement but the result is always exploitation and unethical practices throughout modern history. With surveillance capitalism as the new economic order, how it will affect the privatisation of healthcare with AI at its fingerprints is a matter of rigorous inter-disciplinary research. The paper contends to examine the current and future implication of AI in an environment of surveillance capitalism, focusing on public healthcare and existing laws that protect human rights. It’s an interdisciplinary approach of sociological and legal understanding of public healthcare with privatisation as a measure. The research explores three broad questions, first, how Surveillance capitalism and AI governs social institutions like healthcare economy, second how public healthcare and human rights law correlates with privatisation and finally wrapping it all together, how surveillance capitalism via AI can affect the future of public healthcare and its laws, for better or for worse. There exists plethora of research on the legal implication of Indian public healthcare and its privatisation as well as AI’s affect on it. This paper contributes to the existing knowledge by highlighting the fatalistic nature of AI within the theoretical framework of Surveillance Capitalism and how it will unavoidably affect public healthcare and the human rights in this era of privatisation. The qualitative and comparative method analysis with existing theorisation and information has been applied here as well as infusing interdisciplinary approach with doctrinal research.
KEYWORDS: Privatisation, Surveillance Capitalism, Healthcare, Human Rights, Artificial Intelligence
Introduction
George Orwell, in his celebrated novel ‘1984’ coined the phrase- ‘Big Brother is watching you’. It encapsulates the idea of constant surveillance and the pervasive control the party exerts over every aspect of life in the dystopian society. The omnipresent and omnipotent aspect of a higher power, be it a government or a system in place, like capitalist corporations, has a ubiquitous impact on every sector. This paper particularly navigates Public Healthcare in a theoretical background of Surveillance Capitalism[1]. The term envisions the reality of the new economic system where personal data is commoditised to control people’s behaviour on a macro-level and to engage in unethical profit-making. It has the capability to manipulate in its finger like a puppeteer, numerous socio-economic as well political institutions that govern our lives. As we navigate the uncharted territory of AI and surveillance, we are compelled to confront the prescient warnings of Orwell’s prophetic utterance – “Big Brother is Watching You.”
The intersection of healthcare and artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most promising and transformative areas of technology today. AI has the potential to revolutionize healthcare by improving diagnostics, personalizing treatment, optimizing operations, and even predicting and preventing disease. However, the integration of AI into healthcare also raises important ethical, privacy, and regulatory concerns. Surveillance, loss of privacy, and the possibility of systemic discrimination being perpetuated by these systems that a digital world can create is a plain attack on our Constitution and our fundamental rights. The Public Healthcare system currently in place in India faces insurmountable challenges in terms of infrastructure gaps, Human resources shortages as well poor accessibility, and equity. Privatization is one way out of it for certain classes of society, and with privatization and Neo-liberalism[2] at work, digitalization of healthcare systems is inevitable. In theory, even capitalism was made appealing, capitalism was supposed to bring prosperity and not wealth-gap, exploitation of workers, or depletion of our natural resources, but that is the reality. This new order is “ as significant a threat to human nature in the twenty-first century as industrial capitalism was to the natural world in the nineteenth and twentieth”[3]. How with this system in place, privatization of public healthcare will play out, not theoretically but practically is what this article explores. While we briefly look into other countries that faced adverse effects of digital healthcare systems operated by the big techs without much state regulation, we imagine its consequences on the Indian healthcare system. We imagine what human rights will further be violated due to this new system and provide a way forward, towards an ethical use of AI through a better legal system in place.
[1] Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (PublicAffairs,1st Edition,2019)
[2] Neoliberalism is contemporarily used to refer to market-oriented reform policies such as “eliminating price controls, deregulating capital markets, lowering trade barriers” and reducing, especially through privatization and austerity, state influence in the economy.
[3] ibid