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The author does not fully understand the totality of the work these professional do. From the two example listed. "Radiologists, who can earn over $300,000 a y

The author does not fully understand the totality of the work these professional do. From the two example listed. "Radiologists, who can earn over $300,000 a year in America, after 13 years of college education and internship, are among the first to feel the heat. It is not just that the task of scanning tumour slides and X-ray pictures is being outsourced to Indian laboratories, where the job is done for a tenth of the cost. The real threat is that the latest automated pattern-recognition software can do much of the work for less than a hundredth of it." a very naive understanding of radiologists. This only one of the many task a radiologists must handle, including interaction with patient, which is the most important task. We are far away from replace that service with Ai. Software handling one task won't eliminate the need for radiologists. "Lawyers are in a similar boat now that smart algorithms can search case law, evaluate the issues at hand and summarise the results. Machines have already shown they can perform legal discovery for a fraction of the cost of human professionals—and do so with far greater thoroughness than lawyers and paralegals usually manage." Case discovery is only one of the many task a Lawyer must perform, case discovery alone won't replace lawyers. It will only allow them to be more productive. Lawyers still responsible for many other task, they have to broker deals, consult clients and in the case of trial attorneys, win trials. more thoughts at: http://techiroll.com/post/10173031897/do-not-blame-technology http://techiroll.com/post/10173031897/do-not-blame-technolog...

_delirium 15y ago
I agree it doesn't cover everything they do, but covering just some of the more routine activities can be enough for significant disruption. For example, dermatologists are fairly worried that "upload a photo and we'll diagnose your mole", either via software or outsourcing, will cut out a significant percentage of their business. It's not by any means the hardest work a dermatologist does, but it's common, steady work that produces reliable revenue, so it hurts to lose it. It may be that we won't need as many dermatologists only to handle the actually-hard stuff. (Though for medicine in particular, I think a mixture of "you can always do more" and humans' seemingly infinite hypochondria means that medical spending will continue to eat up as much money as we're willing to throw at it.)
- ericd 15y ago
  This sounds like a glorious future to me :-) I can't wait to have automated health checkups as well (maybe even persistent checkups). Perhaps the number of dermatologists won't even decrease - perhaps we'll simply have an increase in quality/frequency of screening for the same number of dermatologists. Perhaps it will open things up so more people can afford to get regular screenings. I'm not poor, but that's one of those things that I classify as too much of a luxury to do regularly - there are a bunch of different screenings that people could do.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  If they are worried about it, why not preempt it? A simple upload form on the internet where you can upload your a picture of your mole and have a dermatologist take a quick look at it for $15 would be very attractive for a lot of people (not least because it is easier for people to do it than it is to schedule a visit. And it would be a nice side income for some young doctor.
davidhansen 15y ago
This only one of the many task a radiologists must handle, including interaction with patient, which is the most important task. We are far away from replace that service with Ai. Well, yes, except that when an algorithm is doing all diagnosis and analysis, and all you need is someone with bedside manner to interact with the patient, your job requirements go from "N years at a good medical school" to "Experience as a receptionist". It is virtually guaranteed that compensation for this type of position will be driven downward.
politician 15y ago
What if we simplify the tax code, and sentence millions of tax consultants to the unemployment roles? Is it that OK?
nknight 15y ago
> interaction with patient, which is the most important task It's also the one radiologists and other medical professionals routinely fail at. Sorry, but if your argument is "computers don't have a bedside manner", I have to call that a plus... for the computers.
- inkaudio 15y ago
  Sure there are many in the medical profession who fail at beside manners, but it is not the vast majority. And it's not just beside manner, understanding medical terminology, prepping and positioning the patient for the X-ray, X-raying the appropriate body part, operating the machinery safely and effectively, recording keeping, etc.. It's easy for an outsider to downplay the importance of all this, but that's because they don't do the work and never considers what happens when someone messes up: important care is delayed or a patient gets too much x-ray exposure.
siculars 15y ago
My brother happens to be a Radiologist and I know that he is not concerned regarding the "outsourcing" of image diagnosis for two reasons. One being that there is an endless amount of work to be done as more people are able to afford healthcare. Automated diagnosis will help provide the service at a manageable cost to more people. But more importantly, the service provided is just a tool in overall healthcare. In this case the best a computer could do is come up with a list of diagnoses with a confidence coefficient based on different models. It will still be up to the Radiologist to make the final determination as to treatment.
- georgemcbay 15y ago
  "One being that there is an endless amount of work to be done as more people are able to afford healthcare." Yeah. Healthcare. Always getting more and more affordable!
muyuu 15y ago
In both cases, fewer will be needed. This will either cause unemployment in the short term or will pressure the salaries downward. If it's a significant force, that is.

_delirium 15y ago

I agree it doesn't cover everything they do, but covering just some of the more routine activities can be enough for significant disruption. For example, dermatologists are fairly worried that "upload a photo and we'll diagnose your mole", either via software or outsourcing, will cut out a significant percentage of their business. It's not by any means the hardest work a dermatologist does, but it's common, steady work that produces reliable revenue, so it hurts to lose it. It may be that we won't need as many dermatologists only to handle the actually-hard stuff. (Though for medicine in particular, I think a mixture of "you can always do more" and humans' seemingly infinite hypochondria means that medical spending will continue to eat up as much money as we're willing to throw at it.)

ericd 15y ago
This sounds like a glorious future to me :-) I can't wait to have automated health checkups as well (maybe even persistent checkups). Perhaps the number of dermatologists won't even decrease - perhaps we'll simply have an increase in quality/frequency of screening for the same number of dermatologists. Perhaps it will open things up so more people can afford to get regular screenings. I'm not poor, but that's one of those things that I classify as too much of a luxury to do regularly - there are a bunch of different screenings that people could do.
tomjen3 15y ago
If they are worried about it, why not preempt it? A simple upload form on the internet where you can upload your a picture of your mole and have a dermatologist take a quick look at it for $15 would be very attractive for a lot of people (not least because it is easier for people to do it than it is to schedule a visit. And it would be a nice side income for some young doctor.

davidhansen 15y ago

This only one of the many task a radiologists must handle, including interaction with patient, which is the most important task. We are far away from replace that service with Ai. Well, yes, except that when an algorithm is doing all diagnosis and analysis, and all you need is someone with bedside manner to interact with the patient, your job requirements go from "N years at a good medical school" to "Experience as a receptionist". It is virtually guaranteed that compensation for this type of position will be driven downward.

politician 15y ago

What if we simplify the tax code, and sentence millions of tax consultants to the unemployment roles? Is it that OK?

nknight 15y ago

> interaction with patient, which is the most important task It's also the one radiologists and other medical professionals routinely fail at. Sorry, but if your argument is "computers don't have a bedside manner", I have to call that a plus... for the computers.

inkaudio 15y ago
Sure there are many in the medical profession who fail at beside manners, but it is not the vast majority. And it's not just beside manner, understanding medical terminology, prepping and positioning the patient for the X-ray, X-raying the appropriate body part, operating the machinery safely and effectively, recording keeping, etc.. It's easy for an outsider to downplay the importance of all this, but that's because they don't do the work and never considers what happens when someone messes up: important care is delayed or a patient gets too much x-ray exposure.

siculars 15y ago

My brother happens to be a Radiologist and I know that he is not concerned regarding the "outsourcing" of image diagnosis for two reasons. One being that there is an endless amount of work to be done as more people are able to afford healthcare. Automated diagnosis will help provide the service at a manageable cost to more people. But more importantly, the service provided is just a tool in overall healthcare. In this case the best a computer could do is come up with a list of diagnoses with a confidence coefficient based on different models. It will still be up to the Radiologist to make the final determination as to treatment.

georgemcbay 15y ago
"One being that there is an endless amount of work to be done as more people are able to afford healthcare." Yeah. Healthcare. Always getting more and more affordable!

muyuu 15y ago

In both cases, fewer will be needed. This will either cause unemployment in the short term or will pressure the salaries downward. If it's a significant force, that is.