A Paradigm Shift in Plain Sight? AI and the Future of Healthcare in the Nordic States

Abstract

All the Nordic states (except for Iceland at the time of analysis) have published a national artificial intelligence strategy (NAIS) document. The NAISs provide a window through which to view a consolidated point where states set out a socio-technical imaginary ostensibly focused on the impact of AI on the national society but, in so doing, communicate present-day value-laden assumptions. These future visions see an expansion in the scale and scope of private-sector-driven AI applications in healthcare provision as inevitable, positive, and justified based on a promise of efficiency. In so doing, the NAISs institutionalise a shift in how issues of participation, deliberation, and inclusion in health are structured in the future. The article asks what kind of ‘welfareʼ the NAISs present for the Nordic region with respect to the governance, role, and ownership of AI healthcare. In so doing, it reveals how the NAISs provide a vehicle by which to enable a paradigm shift in state–market relations that is, nonetheless, hidden from political scrutiny through its technological futurism.

Keywords

• Nordic welfare
• artificial intelligence
• healthcare
• public
• private