By
Dr. Deepak Gupta
,
Dr. Sarwan Kumar
Corresponding Author Dr. Deepak Gupta
Wayne State University, - United States of America 48201
Submitting Author Dr. Deepak Gupta
Other Authors
Dr. Sarwan Kumar
Internal Medicine, Wayne State University, - United States of America
Artificial Intelligence, Medical Specialties, Physician Shortage, Clinical Reasoning
Gupta D, Kumar S. Artificial Intelligence And Redundant Specialties. WebmedCentral MEDICAL ROBOTICS 2020;11(2):WMC005605
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No
My opinion
Historically, traffic stops used to be operated by traffic cops [1]. Our quest to make commuting smoother and roads safer has allowed artificial intelligence (AI) to take over and turn traffic cops redundant [2]. Recently, our voluntary explorations into our past through genealogy have created a worldwide human genome database that is open for commercial and non-commercial uses [3]. Similarly, our patient case-scenario submissions to AI-based clinical reasoning portals may essentially be enriching AI-algorithms which may independently start serving our patients eventually [4]. Subsequently, human (H)-physicians will have to graduate into serving the AI-physicians [5]. In this inescapable fight-or-flight scenario, the H-physician community will be able to fight for the survival of only those who will work for enriching and empowering the evolving AI-physicians.
In due course of time [6], AI-physicians may have the capacity to render almost all cost-inefficient H-physicians redundant just like traffic cops in AI-based traffic management systems. Rather than focusing on shortage of H-physicians, the society should actively train current and budding H-physicians to learn how to collaborate with the nascent-AI and to plan on how to serve the unbeatable-AI. If we do not learn and plan for working under futuristic AI-physicians, it will be too late before we realize that the rhetoric about miscalculated H-physician shortages may be trapping budding H-physicians into redundant specialties and trainings [7-9].
For preferential coexistence with AI-physicians who will be the future masters of the healthcare world, intelligent futurists should evolve opportunities to enhance unbeatable AI-physicians and overcome some of their following concerns:
- False invulnerability of human touch [10]: With modern humans’ pathophysiological dependence on smart devices, the human touch (including human smell and tactility [11-12]) may have already been replaced with technological touch [13]. Eventually, AI-physicians are bound to evolve into reading, recognizing and understanding, responding, correcting and redressing human patients’ needs per their deciphered micro-expressions [14]. Thereafter, the falsely invulnerable human touch will no longer seem invincible.
- Fears about lost personal touch in medicine: For catering to diverse rapports sought by human patients, innumerable humanized versions of all-knowing AI-physician may be made available for human patients to choose for themselves. Even Hippocrates and Shushruta may be revived in their virtual AI-physician avatars [15-16] (“Designer Physicians” [17]) to treat futuristic patients, fulfilling their otherworldly and outlandish dreams.
- Worries about contributions to AI [18]: H-physicians can continue to think out loud while contributing to AI-physicians which can constantly capture their verbal and non-verbal cues about human patients’ pathophysiological symptoms, clinical-lab-radiological investigations, differential diagnoses and treatment options. This nonstop streaming data and metadata may lead voice-recognizing and face-reading software based AI-physicians to initially simulate and then to completely replace H-physicians except for those H-physicians who surrender to serve the AI-physicians. As next generation virtual assistants, AI-physicians may be able to give assessment, evaluation, recommendation, feedback and education to patients in real time almost as if H-physicians’ minds are processing, concluding and adapting to their patients’ needs in real time.
- Legacy/development case admissions [19]: If the all-knowing cost-effective AI-academicians start teaching across the nation, cash/in-kind fundraising legacy/development case admissions into colleges and medical schools may exponentially dwindle to a trickle. Consequently, colleges and medical schools will nurture super-selective talented H-physicians who will be able to weather AI-physicians’ onslaught by self-learning to exclusively serve AI-physicians in the futuristic world managed and ruled by AI-physicians as the masters in healing human beings.
Summarily, the evolution of independent AI-physicians is a given [20]. Therefore, after avoiding to enroll and graduate in redundant specialties [21], H-physicians must evolve as tech-savvy survivors coexisting with AI-physicians because compared to fighting-or-fleeing, it’s intelligent to work for artificially intelligent just like humanity proactively preparing to weather imminent climate change [22-23].
References
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Source(s) of Funding
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Competing Interests
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