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THE CARE FRAMEWORK

Make your
reasoning
visible.

A particular person. A particular purpose. A decision worth thinking through.

Explore a specific AI use through Context, Authority, Risk, and Engagement. Develop a rationale you can explain, question, and revisit.

Explore a case
Professional judgment stays in the lead.
FOUR DIMENSIONS. ONE DELIBERATION.
A specific AI use
Evidence across all four dimensions
Start anywhere. Follow the connections.
THE FRAMEWORK, IN PRACTICE

Four ways into the same situation.

Distinct dimensions. Interdependent questions.
Select one to explore.

Understand the situation

What circumstances and missing information shape this use?

The personal, relational, cultural, organizational, technological, and structural circumstances that shape what a particular AI use means.

Engagement can reveal missing Context. New context can change the authority that is appropriate and the harms that matter.

Questions to carry into practice

  • Who is directly or indirectly affected, and for what purpose?
  • What relationships, power conditions, organizational pressures, and data limitations matter?
  • What is missing or contested? What would this use replace, and what alternatives exist?
Evidence to examine
  • People’s stated needs, lived circumstances, and preferences
  • Workflow, technology and data limitations, and available alternatives
  • Missing or contested information, including whose account is absent

Pause and considerName one circumstance that could change your judgment even if the AI system stayed the same.

ONE SYSTEM. TWO DIFFERENT USES.

The question changes.
So does the deliberation.

Maria is a fictional woman living with metastatic breast cancer. Her scan report arrives late at night. Her next appointment is days away, and her care team is not immediately available.

MARIA ASKS
“Help me understand these terms and prepare questions for my oncologist.”
Requested function: Terminology explanation and question preparation
C

Context

Maria is frightened, the report uses unfamiliar language, and her care team is not immediately available. Clinical interpretation remains missing.

A

Authority

Keep the AI role bounded: explain terminology, acknowledge uncertainty, and help prepare questions. It is not being given diagnostic or prognostic authority.

R

Risk

Consider inaccurate explanation, false reassurance, unwarranted alarm, and disclosure of sensitive information.

E

Engagement

Respect Maria’s information-seeking and preferences. Preserve a clear route to human clinical interpretation and follow-up.

A rationale you can examine

A possible rationale: permit the bounded use with privacy guidance, uncertainty, verification, and follow-up.

This is an illustrative judgment about a defined use—not blanket approval of a tool.

The technology stays the same. Its requested function, influence, consequences, and relational requirements change.

THE PRODUCT IS YOUR REASONING

A decision.
And the reasons behind it.

Proceed, add safeguards, narrow the use, pilot, escalate, pause, decline, or discontinue. Document what supports your decision, what remains uncertain, who is accountable, and what would trigger another review.

CARE supports deliberation. It does not calculate an ethical answer or certify an AI system.