Stoicism and posthuman care: AI, robotics, and the future of medical anthropology

This paper examines the ability of Stoic ethics to diagnose and alleviate ontological anxiety caused by generative artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare settings. It puts forward the idea that as AI progressively colonises areas that have traditionally been considered exclusively human, such as creative problem-solving and empathic attunement, it erodes established anthropocentric boundary markers. This can lead to existential distress among clinicians and patients. Avoiding the simplistic debate of 'prohibition versus endorsement’, the study reimagines such anxiety as a cultural rupture: algorithmic mediation dismantles the symbolic economies of caregiving and destabilises the intersubjective foundations of medical identity. Mobilising the Stoic triad of the dichotomy of control, the equation of virtue with eudaimonia and the exercise of detached universality in a cosmopolitan context, the argument outlines a post-human medical ethic that uses AI for data-intensive, procedural labour, while preserving emotionally saturated, morally valenced care as an exclusively human prerogative. Cross-cultural robustness is provisionally modelled through family-centric interface design in East Asian contexts and algorithmic autonomy safeguards in Euro-Atlantic jurisdictions. The analysis acknowledges methodological constraints, particularly the limited scope of clinical scenarios currently investigated and the lack of empirical evidence.