Hacker News Reader

Comment by cpard | Hacker News Reader

I think Waymo is a little bit different and driving in general. Because you have an activity that most people don’t trust how other people perform it already. It’s easier to accept the robo driver.

For the medical world, I’d look to the Invisalign example as a more realistic path on how automation will become part of it.

The human will still be there the scale of operations per doctor will go up and prices will go down.

View on HN

LASIK is essentially an automated surgery and 1-2 million people get it done every year. Nobody even seems to care that it’s an almost entirely automated process.

Makes total sense, I think robotic surgeries are happening for quite a while now not only for eye surgeries.

And I think it’s another great example of how automation is happening in the medical practice.

If they can automate training me not to recoil from the eye speculum I'd appreciate it, my pesky body does not like things getting too close.

(Serious remark)

I think sedation may be an option (chemical automation, how about it?)

I was told it wasn't :(

Full anesthesia - yeah, not an option, you need to be awake. Something milder - it could be an option (depending on the state, maybe? not sure, mine was done in WA).

Neither me nor my friends (all of us who got lasik) asked for it, but my clinic gave me valium, and my friends’ clinic gave them xanax shortly before the procedure.

Tangential sidenote: that was nearly 8 years ago, and I am absolutely glad I got it done.

Noted! I'm in the UK and nobody mentioned anything. Maybe I'll ask! I'd love to not have glasses even if it was just some of the time.

Not a doctor or an expert on this but as a patient I would say LASIK sounds less invasive than internal organ operations...

They're cutting into your eye!

With a laser!!!

Maybe not the best example:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/18/lasik-laser-...

Any intervention, heck even jogging around your house, has a risk. The only important question is: are there less automated errors than human errors? If yes, here's the progress we asked for.

If no, then it isn't. Given that they overstate their success rate by orders of magnitude there seems to be a problem.

My perception (and personal experience) is medical malpractice is so common, I’d gladly pick a Waymo-level robot doctor over a human one. Probably skewed since I’m a “techie”, but then again that’s why Waymo started at the techie epicenter, then will slowly become accepted everywhere

> My perception (and personal experience) is medical malpractice is so common [...]

I think it's interesting that we as human think it's better to create some (somewhat mostly) correct roboter to perform medical stuff instead of - together as human race - start to care about stuff.

I don’t think the problem is “caring”. Waymo has proven the obvious - a machine with higher cognitive function that never gets distracted is better than most humans at an activity that requires constant attention and fast reflexes. I’m sure the same will eventually apply to other activities too.

It’s a much better investment of time to make robots that can do delicate activities (eg Neuralink’s implant robot), consistently and correctly, than training humans and praying that all of them are equally skilled, never get older or drink coffee or come to the operating table stressed out one day…

Uhmmm... I'm sorry but when Waymo started near everyone I talked to about it says "zero % I'm going in one of those things, they won't be allowed anyway, they'll never be better than a human, I wouldn't trust one, nope, no way" and now people can't wait to try them. I understand what you're saying about the trusted side of the house (surgeons are generally high trust) - but I do think OP is right, once the data is in, people will want robot surgery.

Of course they will. I don’t argue that they won’t.

I just say that the path to that and the way it’s going to be implemented is going to be different and Invisalign is a better example to how it will happen in the medical industry compared to automotive.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com