America’s Largest Public Hospital System Says AI Could Replace Radiologists

I can’t wait for this bubble to blow up in all their dumb faces.

For what it’s worth, “AI” in this context is probably not the content-stealing Generative AI that everyone is trying to cram everywhere it doesn’t belong. This is a much more legitimate application of a similar technology. I’m not mad about the idea of AI in radiology because it’s a really good fit. A human radiologist can’t compare a hundred similar slices and cross-correlate possible anomalies, whereas AI can. This improves detection and outcomes and is exactly where medical technology is supposed to help. That said, I don’t think we’ll replace radiologists across the board for a long time. This will be a very useful tool and will probably reduce the number of radiologists required and modify their roles significantly, but it’ll be more like how a single worker with editing software can do work that would have required a small team in the pre-digital days of film.

The replacing part is the problem. Using a local system to help is fine, but it still requires humans who know what they’re doing and what they’re looking at.

Sometimes, for example human + AI systems used to be better than either one in isolation, but chess AI improved so much that the human partner is actually not helping anymore