Anthropological Singularity and Algorithmic Stratification: A Medical-Sociological Reframing of the Bioethical Principles Governing the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare

Abstract

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into medical practice is a paradigmatic transformation that compels a reconsideration of the very conceptual structure of bioethics. We argue that this transformation is the local symptom of a wider mutation we designate the anthropological singularity: the threshold at which humanity withdraws from natural evolution and enters an artificial, self-directed one, along three converging vectors—the virtualisation of social space, the cognitive and relational reconfiguration of the human agent through interaction with AI, and the modification of the biological substratum through synthetic biology and gene editing. This approach must be seen as a conceptual study, and not as a systematic literature review, since the study does not aggregate empirical findings but constructs them by defending a theoretical framework and drawing on medical sociology, medical anthropology and biolaw, in order to examine the recurrent tensions between transparency vs. performance, justice vs. efficacy, precaution vs. innovation. We argue that algorithmic bias is part of socio-technical ecosystems, being a systemic property of these. We also argue that responsibility must migrate towards distributed frameworks between human and non-human agents, and that the digital revolution could produce an algorithmic stratification of populations, now prolonged through gene editing into the very biology of future generations. An augmented bioethics is required—not mere delegation of moral judgement to algorithms, but a reflexive framework that revises the ontological presuppositions of principlism, sustained by multi-stakeholder governance and deliberate public policies.