A New Approach to Civil Liability for Artificial Intelligence-Based Medical Practices
Jae Mok Lee · 2025
This paper focuses on the possibility of modifying the traditional civil liability principle for medical accidents caused by AI medical practices in the medical field, where the application area of AI technology is expanding. Although it is unlikely that AI will completely replace human clinicians in the short term, it is clear that AI medical systems will play an increasingly essential role in medical practice. There is considerable uncertainty about how AI medicine and civil liability will be structured and applied, especially given the pace of technological progress and the difficulty of accurately predicting its outcomes. What is clear, however, is that given the pace at which we are witnessing advances in AI technology, it is increasingly likely that fully autonomous medical robots will surpass human skills in certain medical fields and will be able to perform medical procedures on their own without any further human supervision. Currently, discussions are actively underway in the US, EU, and other countries on standards for judging negligence in AI medical practices, distribution of responsibility among various entities, the legal status of AI assuming fully autonomous AI, and measures for redressing damages. It is time to consider establishing a legal theory of responsibility that can flexibly respond to changes in AI technology while paying attention to international discussion trends.