Physicians versus computers – the wrong question!!!

Over the past 2 days, listening to separate podcasts, I have heard the same story and now have a better understanding of artificial intelligence.  A Freakonomics podcast – The Future (Probably) Isn’t as Scary as You Think And in general, what’s happened in the past couple of years is the best chess player on this planet is not an AI. And it’s not a human. It’s the team that he calls centaurs; it’s the team of humans and AI. Because they’re complementary. Because AIs think differently than humans. And the same of the world’s best medical diagnostician is not Watson, it’s not a human doctor. It’s the team of Watson plus doctor. In this Knowledge Project podcast, the same examples and conclusions develop – Pedro Domingos on Artificial Intelligence As I listened to these discussions, an important concept crystallized.  Computers and especially AI will provide us the best “peripheral brain”, but they really cannot replace us.  Humans have strengths that computers likely will have great difficulty duplicating.  Computers do not really think, but their algorithms can reveal connections that we humans do not recognize.  So working with algorithms we can do a better job at diagnosis and treatment. Recently we had a wonderful gentleman in his 70s admitted for chest pain.  Chest pain occurs for many different reasons.  Our human skills are put to a major test in sorting out a precise history.  This intelligent, verbal patient kept talki...
Source: DB's Medical Rants - Category: Internal Medicine Authors: Tags: Medical Rants Source Type: blogs