Displaced responsibility: when AI moves the problem instead of solving it
At the G7 in Évian, AI's own developers asked for rules to govern it. But alignment doesn't emerge on its own: without shared spaces, responsibility shifts, and in healthcare the one who loses most is the patient.
What happens when AI's own developers are the ones asking for rules to govern it.
Last week this became clear at the G7 in Évian, where heads of state sat at the same table as the CEOs of the leading AI companies. That the topic was addressed in a formal session, on the same level as security, international trade or finance, signals that AI is already being considered public policy.
Which isn't illogical when you look at AI's reach and risks: impact on learning, cybersecurity, financial stability, redesign of the labor market.
But the meeting was far from an orderly consensus. It was the developers themselves who asked for the framework, some calling for a US-led coalition to set the rules, while European countries sought checks on that same concentration of power. It's no small thing: this mirrors what we see on a smaller scale, at the sector and even organizational level. Alignment doesn't emerge spontaneously from bringing together the actors with the most resources or decision-making power.
And still, it's a step that matters, a lot. Not for its ability to resolve anything, but because it makes something essential visible: without a shared space for dialogue and exchange, it's impossible to establish where there's agreement and, above all, where there isn't. That's the starting point. Not the solution, the condition for beginning to see it.
The discomfort is that as long as there are no spaces for shared dialogue and alignment, no one will take responsibility. And this is especially relevant in healthcare, where the ecosystem is highly fragmented but the patient who moves through it is just one. As long as these spaces don't exist and we can't align the actors, impact will stay limited and risks poorly managed.
Think of a medical center that, thanks to AI, can see twice as many patients in a day. What happens if the insurer covering them doesn't have the money to fund twice as many treatments? The risk shifts. The bottleneck remains, somewhere else, but it remains. Each actor solved its part: the medical center, its capacity; AI, its promise. And still the problem didn't disappear, it moved.
That's displaced responsibility: when each one optimizes their own piece and no one takes charge of the patient who crosses the entire system.
What if the different actors in the health system shared, at one table, where they apply AI, what value they create and what barriers they hit? What are we missing by not having them there? The one thing we know for sure is that the one who loses most, always, is the patient.