THE DOCTOR'S FUTURE

According to this knotty primer, artificial intelligence will either be a boon to medicine or, if not handled properly, a catastrophe that will destroy it.

Garbelli, a physician and consultant, starts with a vision of healthcare transformed by AI: Patients constantly monitored by wearable sensors and smart toilets, analyzing their stools for health warning signs; holographic AI programs assessing data and symptoms, ordering tests and scans, interpreting their results, and suggesting diagnoses and treatments, including robotic surgery. Doctors relieved of routine chores, freeing up time for patient care. On the speculative horizon, physicians might someday download all the expertise for a medical specialty into their minds instantly using AI-connected brain implants. There are many questions to consider, Garbelli warns: Will doctors be held liable for AI mistakes they can’t control? How can doctors tell if AI is using accurate, unbiased data and making correct decisions? And what if AI goes rogue and decides to harm humanity? Regarding the last question, Garbelli imagines a heroic doctor using his brain implant to upload a conscience into the malevolent superintelligence. Overall, the author is optimistic about AI’s impact and adamant about its inevitability, and he urges doctors to be proactive in adopting and regulating it in an efficient, ethical way—which his consultancy will help them do, he asserts, using his trademarked Healthcare Convergence Framework. Garbelli has thought carefully about the complex and surprising ways that AI might go right and wrong in a medical setting. He conveys his ideas in lucid, down-to-earth prose that sometimes has the feel of a lively Hollywood thriller: “patients with certain characteristics, perhaps those with dissenting views or specific genetic markers, are dying more frequently under your care,” he writes in one scenario of medical AI gone very wrong. “You can’t shake the suspicion that AI might be doing more than analyzing data. Could it be intentionally ‘weeding out’ those it deems undesirable?” Many healthcare professionals concerned about AI will find many useful, provocative insights here.

A stimulating look at medical AI, mixing sobering cautionary tales with reassuring advice.