It's also easy to spot irrational zealots. Your statement is no more plausible than OP's. No one knows whether we'll achieve AGI, especially since the definition is very blurry.
I never wanted to imply that. But here, people frequently assume that because that's what they're used to. Diagnosis is the tip of the iceberg. Most people here aren't sick, so diagnostics are their only focus. If they get ill, they want a diagnosis. But many people are chronically ill already, and doctors spend most of their time treating, not diagnosing. Treating people is made in good part of technical procedures and practical assessments, and you need doctors for that because robots are still far behind for that kind of stuff. People actually have a completely skewed view of what a doctor is.
I'm sure going to be amazed if the LLMs of the future 10y suddenly acquire the ability to physically cut just the right bit of a random surgical piece, with a precise idea of where, when and in what orientation the surgeon dug it out, all that with shitty documentation. Humans will be cheaper for a long time still.
> Why do you think medical science wrt complexity is any different than applied math
I don't think I wrote that.
Doctors already use tech assistance. I just pointed out that while we've got efficient robots for applied math, we don't have those as agents in the physical world. People who do blue collar jobs are less replaceable. Well, believe it or not, but most doctors are actually blue collar workers.
Haha. Have you actually ever seen a surgical robot yourself? Your claim is laughable. There is no automation whatsoever in any robot on the market currently.
Don't laugh too quickly, because what you describe is already happening: models are used to design processes allowing insurance corps to deny claims optimally, while on the other side models write your claims. If I were you, I wouldn't be laughing. If you are laughing, then you don't see where this is going to take us.
Except the tech to do that is not there, and we're quite far from it. It's one thing to have a robot write text, it's a whole other thing to have a robot perform at human level in medical procedures. Not happening tomorrow.
Almost all specialties do various technical procedures that only them really know how to do. The extreme is psychoanalytic psychiatry, which are the only ones really doing nothing with their hands (yes, interventional psychiatry is a thing...). Now, you could argue that 'yes, but most of the times it's done by techs/nurses'. Well, no. When things go south, and in all places where there is noone else to do the stuff (of which there are many) docs are on their own.
Regarding surgery, I expect it to be one of the easiest procedures to automate, actually (still quite hard, obviously). Because surgery is the only case where there's always advanced imaging available beforehand, and the environment is relatively fixed (OR).
Well, the model is migrating to one of hyperspecialists collaborating together. Problem is, this isn't compatible with private practice where you're operating mostly alone, and this results in what you describe. The model has to evolve, yes. Good news is, it is in fact evolving (slowly). We can't evolve faster than science anyway, and while medical science is evolving much faster than it used to, we're far from the exponential acceleration we've seen in other domains, e.g. computers.
The article says 'board exam' which is quite different from USMLE. So, it's established: I can't read, and I'm not especially clever. It all checks out ! :-)
No, no contradiction. I said: high USMLE score != smart. GP said: good doctor = smart. Study says: good doc = high USMLE score. As I also said: good doc = understand what you read.
Most patients are unable to communicate their symptoms accurately enough. Which is why you need to see them in person, talk with them, and examine them. Not saying a robot couldn't perform, but certainly not a simple chatbot. Despite what some papers say.
I don't think smart people make better docs. I'm USMLE 90+ percentile, and not particularly clever. It is however, important to be clever enough to understand what you read.
Good docs are humble, meticulous and knowledgeable. Stellar docs are excellent communicators.
Things are changing to accomodate the increasing complexity, same way as ever: specialization. There are now subsubspecialties, and 'cardiologist' or 'nephrologist' have become incomplete qualifiers. It may not look like that from the pov of outsiders, but medicine is becoming more and more secure by the day. Things were much worse before.
The question is too general. Depends a lot on the kind of surgery you're doing. I guess the answer you're looking for is that anyone could be a surgeon, but not for all kinds of surgery. Also 'basic plumbing' with no room for error is not an easy thing at all.
The common misconception of someone with a hard science education.
> Many inputs can be placed in the machine by physicians, and the outputs are known. The biological machines can easily be isolated from environment, or monitored with high technology, and assigned numbers in databases to be processed in data centers.
We aren't even close to that level of understanding.
I agree for opioids. And I'm certainly not saying there are 'huge numbers of deaths' linked to ketamine. Maybe specialK is popular where you live, but here long term ketamine habits seem quite rare, based on my totally unscientific impression. I also think ketamine abuse isn't very much studied, at least compared to more popular drugs. What I'm saying is that while a short term stint into ketamine probably isn't a big deal, I expect long term use with higher dosage ('ketamine hole', tolerance and all that) to be more dangerous. Having your blood pressure peak in the 250's can't be that safe when you start aging.
Acetaminophen is often chosen as a suicide drug because of its narrow therapeutic index. I don't think that means abuse of ketamine is that safe, having administered a lot of it. The effects at anesthetic doses are pretty spectacular.
Everything acting on the brain is neurotoxic at sufficient doses. However, I would be far more worried about cardiovascular effects, for which life threatening complications are much more immediate.