There should be a public option that can compete with private entities. Especially since policymakers, for some weird reason, refuse to publicly scrutinize prices set by private healthcare facilities.

From: www.who.int/publications...

Honestly, I would like to be excited about AI. But until it is developed & deployed under a different paradigm, I remain cautions about it, and my engagement towards AI would probably be seeking to mitigate its costs.

But beyond non-maleficence, at present, deployment of AI in medicine outside of research settings is premature because demonstration of clear and reasonable improvement in outcomes (which are also subject to values) is still pending.

And this shouldn't be the case in healthcare. Many deride the health sector for its slow pace of innovation (which is a real challenge), but relaxing safety regulations is not the way to go. After all, the most famous tenet of medicine is "first, do no harm"

"move fast and break things"
"ask forgiveness rather than permission"

Facebook. Cambridge Analytica. Theranos.
I don't think it's a stretch to say many devs practice this attitude. It's esp egregious when practiced w/p regard for the common interest & the precautionary principle.

This brings me to my 2nd reason for my skepticism re AI. Tech sector, with their growth/profit motive, develops and deploys tools (including AI) in an unbalanced manner. Too much weight is placed on perceived benefits but potential harms/costs remain an afterthought.

Again, AI devs/users pay lip service to the goal of human enhancement but use language (''perform better than humans") that actually implies the intent of human replacement. In a two-tiered health system with a strong private and/or for-profit sector, how is AI likely to be used?

This is also applicable to the healthcare context. At first impression, AI seems to hold the potential to make medicine better for both patients and healthcare providers.

Same goes for AI users such as corps seemingly ecstatic at the prospect of finally undermining human labor. All for maximizing profits. The lack of concern and solidarity for the people they are willing to sacrifice is not something I can agree with

I guess the most basic reason I am not excited about AI as it is currently known is because I don't share the values of both its avid developers and users.

AI devs pay lip service to the common good, but then you see them partnering with war industries committing atrocities.

rising inequality
reinforcement of unfair structures
persistence of injustices
erosion of rights
polarization and loss of sense of community

Each new tech has been wielded in a way that has contributed to these.

Today, I think differently.

My skepticism re AI (and with any tech advancement, tbh) is first rooted in the current state of the world. "Making the world a better place" is a common pitch for anyone trying to introduce a new tech. The internet, smartphones, social media.

Since then, there have been times when I thought how great it would be if I could offload some tasks to computers. When I was most discontented with the profession, I would take this sentiment to the extreme and would imagine a future where doctors have been made obsolete.

At the same time, the relatively benign load of LU5 allowed me to explore other interests such as statistics and data science. That's when I first learned about natural language processing and machine learning