There has been much hype about AI for several years. Some in the health care industry– and within medicine specifically– are jumping in, head first. I have tended to be wary.
An article in the AAPS journal by Patrick Wood elucidates the risks well.
First, there is the risk that AI in medicine will become a tool of technocracy. Recall that COVID was managed by technocratic rule. AI could become a convenient tool for implementing it in covert fashion.
Second, there is the risk that corporate employers of physicians will use it to control medical care. Check out this paragraph:
“AI already oversees the automated office. It is in charge of intake data, and provides AI diagnosis, AI treatment options, AI prescriptions, medical coding and billing. It leads the process to preconceived conclusions. Doctors accept the default option during the encounter. They are absolved from responsibility for bad outcomes because ‘AI said…’. If they do not follow the AI-recommended protocols, doctors risk loss of billing income, job loss, and even loss of medical license.”
The patient has no idea any of this is happening.
The cheerleaders for AI will claim it will reduce medical errors. The hallmark of professionalism, however, is careful contemplation of alternative approaches and applying them to a given situation.
The system wants to replace physicians, and of the lesser numbers that remain, it wants to convert them to technicians.
Risks grossly outweigh the benefits. AI would undoubtedly accept the pronouncements of CDC, etc. A CDC who says that childhood vaccines are safe and effective because they have studiously avoided finding any evidence to the contrary…by licensing them all based on a very short study with no placebo control group, a tiny experimental group (137 babies is typical), and very short adverse reaction observation period (4-30 days for most vaccines)…and then once licensed CDC claims it would be unethical to do a placebo control group study. Never mind that hundreds of parents and VAERS “signal” them that the licensed vaccine is killing and maiming children.
The medical-industrial complex is criminally corrupt. Just finding an independent and logical human physician is hard enough.
Like many short-cuts, ARTIFICIAL intelligence is replete with danger.
I agree, J. Sobran. And the CDC is only a small portion of the “authorities” that would potentially impose certain choices on physicians. You have hospital systems, other corporate employers of physicians, medical boards, insurance companies, pharmacy networks, technology companies…
Anything that prevents the free and unfettered practice of medicine is not good for the patient. I agree with you, TC, and J. Sobran about the risks involved with AI in this particular field.
Fred, the hospital systems and other corporate employers of physicians will jump gleefully on board. Let the patient beware.