A Giant Leap: How AI Is Transforming Healthcare and What That Means for Our Future

The future of AI is probably one of the most discussed topics of our current day. Developments in the technology of AI are leaping ahead of use before we can even wrap our heads around what it is. The use of AI in medicine is no exception: rapidly improving, but still being grappled with on the human level. Physician and author Robert Wachter has spent a lot of time trying to understand the role of technology—and now AI—in healthcare. His previous book, The Digital Doctor, explored the transition of healthcare from pen and paper record keeping to digital interfaces, and the dramatic improvements to patient care this brought about. Now, AI is offering us technological advancements on a whole new level. From diagnostic algorithms that outperform doctors to AI that can check a patient's vital signs while they're at home, it's clear that AI has a role to play in improving medicine. The real question is where will human doctors fit into the picture? Now, we’re not quite at the point where we can hand over the reins of medicine completely to AI, but that potential future is not so far off at the rate in which AI’s abilities are improving.

Wachter provides a comprehensive and compelling narrative of AI’s current role in medicine, exploring both the possibility and the pitfalls of its use, and how it affects patients and doctors. Wachter offers a book that everyone can learn from and writes with a clearness and humor that makes the topic approachable. This book will make you think long and hard about the value of humans, even when an AI can do the job better, which is an important issue to consider that extends to all facets of our lives. However, Wachter illustrates how we can use AI to build a better future for human health and wellbeing, but this future is dependent on the choices we make now. AI can either transform medicine for the better or become a detriment to it, it's up to us to decide which it will be.