From “teaching by word and deed” to “intelligent mentorship”: ethical reconsiderations of AI-enabled medical education — lessons from China

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Source: Frontiers Medicine

Original: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2025.1754139...

Published: 2026-01-12T00:00:00Z

The article describes how artificial intelligence is fundamentally changing medical education, leading to the emergence of a "fourth generation of medical education" that emphasizes health, interdisciplinary integration, and smart technologies. AI increases the efficiency and degree of customization of teaching, influences lesson planning, curriculum development and virtual clinical simulations. The authors highlight the tension between the humanistic nature of medicine and the mechanistic logic of AI, which can lead to a weakening of the teacher-student relationship, a weakening of medical humanism, and ethical issues such as algorithmic bias and invasion of privacy. Using the example of Chinese medical education, the article systematically analyzes these ethical challenges. He proposes a three-dimensional framework of ethical reconstruction: reshaping the teacher-student relationship, strengthening medical humanism, and improving ethical management through the cooperation of government, society, hospitals, and universities. It emphasizes the need to preserve "learning by word and deed" and combine technological rationality with humanistic care. According to the article, the long-term sustainability of AI-enabled medical education is based on the principle of "humanity in intelligence."