Will autonomous AI deliver better medical care than physicians by 2030?
Who knows, but that didn’t stop Vinod Khosla from saying it in JAMA (and starting an angry mob of doctors in the process).
When Khosla talks, people listen. The VC heavyweight has a long track record of nice picks in healthcare – Abridge, Headspace, Sword, and most recently Bunkerhill.
- His predictions carry a lot of weight, especially when he makes them in a respected journal with co-authors like former White House health policy adviser Zeke Emanuel and Curai Health CEO Neal Khosla (maybe genius runs in the family).
The latest forecast ruffled some feathers. It’s easy to see why: “AI alone will provide better medical care than physicians, or even physicians working with AI.”
The article argues that AI already rivals or outperforms doctors at five cognitive medical tasks:
- gathering patient information
- choosing tests
- making diagnoses
- prescribing treatments
- managing chronic diseases
Those are some big ones. The authors cite plenty of evidence to back that up (some might say low-quality evidence), then go on to predict that the gap will only widen from here.
- The argument is that AI is rapidly improving, whereas physicians are increasingly threatened by AI-induced deskilling.
- They also make the case that once AI beats physicians at a task, including a human in the loop will only degrade performance. In other words, AI-only care will outperform human-AI hybrid care.
Fair points for the techno-optimists. Not fair enough for the doctors.
- Everyone agrees that getting the diagnosis right matters. Choosing the right test matters. Recommending the right treatment matters.
- But so does understanding what a patient values, knowing when something doesn’t feel right, and having the instinct to act on it.
Performing medical tasks isn’t the same as practicing medicine. AI might be better at one, but you’ll get an angry mob if you say it’s better at both.
- If serendipity is on your side, you might also get a beautiful new framework for physicians’ role in the age of AI, straight from DiMe and the same AMA that runs a certain journal that isn’t afraid to print hot takes.
The Takeaway
Average views produce average returns, and Khosla didn’t make his fortune by following the herd. That said, this might be the most contrarian view we’ve ever seen, so luckily we only have to wait until 2030 to find out if doctors are all out of the job.
