Bob Wachter

Although you do write about the fact that AIs can do better in the empathy realm than humans.

That was one of the shockers that in those early years, which is really only two years ago, when we saw AI passing the medical licensing board or doing well on really tough clinical cases.

It was like, okay, it's pretty smart.

And then studies began to come out saying if you did a blinded trial of a patient actor being given answers either by doctors or by AI, they often preferred the answers from AI.

And the AI

appear to be more empathic.

Of course, the AI has no empathy, but it can fake it really, really well.

Some of my doctor friends have been telling me that their patients will come to them having used chat or some other AI bot to go through some scenarios or symptoms or whatever.

And the docs seem generally pretty happy about it.

And this is, to me, in stark contrast to a trend from 10 or 20 years ago where direct advertisement began on television for pharmaceuticals where patients would come and say, OK, I just heard about this thing.

I just need you to sign me up and give it to me.

And they feel now, at least this is for my friends, that the AIs are becoming a pretty decent research tool for the patient to then bring to them the expert.

I'm curious if you're seeing that, how you feel about that trend generally?

Seeing a ton of it.

I mean, they were doing a version of this with Google, but these tools are better.

And so the answers they're getting are better.

I think it's net positive.

I think anything that democratizes health care is going to be good, assuming the answers are reasonable and correct and assuming that patients, when they need to see a doctor, still see a doctor.

And I think that's the open question here.

Okay, Bob, here's what you've said that you hope AI can do.