BETWEEN CARE AND SURVEILLANCE: THE DIGITAL PANOPTICON AND THE ETHICAL CHALLENGES OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN HEALTH

Abstract

The expansion of digital health has repositioned artificial intelligence (AI) as a central axis of contemporary care systems, expanding diagnostic, monitoring, and population management capabilities. This article aims to critically analyze the ethical challenges of AI in digital health, based on the tension between care and surveillance, mobilizing the concept of the digital panopticon as an analytical key. This is a theoretical-critical essay, with a qualitative and interdisciplinary approach, based on a narrative review of the scientific literature and normative documents. The results indicate that the algorithmic automation of care intensifies processes of datafication, continuous surveillance, and self-management of life, shifting the centrality of the subjective experience of illness and straining the relational dimension of clinical practice. Challenges related to algorithmic opacity, bias, data governance, and accountability are also evident. It is concluded that an ethically sustainable incorporation of AI in healthcare requires democratic data governance, multi-sectoral coordination, patient-centeredness, and a reaffirmation of care as an ethical and political practice.