Human mortality has meant that we have often revered doctors even when historically their remedies and cures were unfounded. Little it seems changes. In a recent US study doctors were only accurate in 55% of easy cases and just 6% of the time in difficult ones. But now computers have the potential, and some claim are already able, to aggregate across all human conditions and analyze symptoms to determine what is wrong with us more accurately than ever before.
Will this make doctors redundant? Will it usher in an era of diagnosis that is hugely superior to current human judgments? Or is there something special about human analysis which computers can never match?
Palliative care doctorand author of Your Life in My Hands Rachel Clarke, psychiatrist David Healy and Oxford University futurist Anders Sandberg ask whether AI might one day keep the doctor away.