Bob Wachter

Patients think that too.

There was a Gallup survey last year.

When people were asked their attitudes about AI, they were really negative about its impact on jobs, on the political system, and I sort of feel the same way.

The one area they felt positively about it was in medicine.

I think that's partly because the AI is really good and partly because the system is so screwed up.

Everybody recognizes that we are in desperate need of reform in healthcare and our typical go-to response in medicine when we can't do what we need to do is we just hire more humans.

A, we can't afford it.

We're already 20% of the GDP and bankrupting businesses and people and governments.

But B, we can't even find the humans, even if we could afford them, at least for the foreseeable future.

This is going to help me do my job, help me be more of the doctor or the nurse I want to be, help me focus on the patient.

So that leaves me optimistic over the next 10 years.

Will there be jobs for doctors?

20, 30 years from now?

Well, unless I live to 120, that's no relevance to me.

But, you know, I think there will be.

That, again, was Robert Wachter, whose new book is called A Giant Leap.

We also heard from Wachter's one-time mentee, Pierre Elias, at Columbia University.

My thanks to both of them.

I learned many things in this episode.

Hope you did, too.