Understanding the factors that influence consumer trust in AI-driven healthcare technologies within the risk society using vaccine hesitancy as a case study

My research aims to investigate how epistemic trust impacts healthcare decision making where artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are involved, exploring ways in which AI complicates the trust relationship in healthcare due to the qualities of the technology itself and the epistemic environment in which the health consumer is situated. I draw on the sociological theory of risk society to contextualise the credibility of the institutions responsible for managing AI risks, and the way the risk society positions the healthcare consumer as ‘public health citizen.’ I use vaccine hesitancy as a case study for understanding public trust in AI health care to reveal the complex interplay between epistemic trust, institutional legitimacy, and the lived experience of health risk. As AI technologies are introduced into similarly intimate and uncertain domains of health care within the risk society, these same dynamics are likely to re-emerge.