Table 1 Introductory vignette

Imagine: In a few years, your hospital information system will contain a program to help you when making complicated ethical decisions (e.g. limiting therapy in intensive care). These are decisions for patients who cannot express their will themselves.

Based on clinical, demographic and personal characteristics from the medical record, the program predicts the preferences of incapacitated patients for an upcoming therapy decision. The prediction of the program is based on empirically collected training data processed by artificial intelligence.

*The predictions generated by the program can be utilized to assist doctors or patient representatives in making decisions when there is no valid advance directive and the patients’ preferences are largely unknown.

*Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a machine to imitate human competencies, such as logical thinking, learning, planning and creativity. It enables technical systems to find correlations in the data provided without explicit guidance and, based on these, to independently optimize their learning and work processes as well as their results.