It’s quite established at this point that AI (artificial intelligence) will, in some shape or form, displace a tremendous number of jobs. While many assume that the jobs may just be the “low hanging fruit” of employment (sorry to say), the reality is that any data-in, data-out jobs are under risk as well. Employment skills that require concrete knowledge of rules/laws like lawyers or paralegals or careful calculations such as accounting or bookkeeping are now under risk of being chopped, too. I encourage you to read my rather blunt and bleak article below 'Are Your Necessary' where I question the existence of most jobs (not including those impacted by this AI effect)
Regardless, I’m sure both of us can agree that there are major changes coming, for better or worse, but we certainly don’t want to be left behind. One change I want to mention relates to professionalism in very tightly regulated industries, namely medicine.
Regulated
Highly regulated industries such as medicine (I suspect) are going to remain to have key professional personnel to “sign off” or “agree” to the results that are provided through machine learning protocols. You can imagine a situation where this solves a shortage of doctors where most “doctors” are machines and the few humans that remain are almost pressing buttons “agree” or “disagree” all day.
Why? Because this would likely make the legal situation for hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies and governments a lot easier without having to draft a plethora of new laws to compensate for the previous laws. Time is money after all... and they still get the effects of the quick AI doctors.
Too Many Experts But Not Enough
I don’t know if you’ve ever used google to self-diagnose yourself–I certainly have. I think the internet is an excellent tool to narrow down what your ailment is, gauge it’s severity and take some steps to regulate yourself. Now with AI Chat searches, full plans to get better can be developed that in seconds from the comfort of your home. The chat will precisely distinguish what your problem is and all of the prescribed pathways forward given the symptoms you feed it. This is the same effect, but without the “you may have cancer” warning signs that come up with every health-related search as before.
Merging this knowledge with robotics has now shown to be equal or more efficient as world-ranked top surgeons and some surgeries have even be performed internationally through 5G networks.
Story
I have told this before on here, but I recall going to the doctor for an appointment in Canada to receive the doctor holding an iPad. She asked me about 8 questions while looking at the iPad the entire time (not inspecting me as the patient) and at the end issued me a supposed diagnosis and wrote me three prescriptions. I saw the iPad with the 3 recommended prescriptions which were the same ones she wrote me–this was in 2016. I left thinking, what the hell did I need the doctor for anyway?
Where This Ties Together
The matter that I believe going missed by many is a natural competency gap that is inevitably going to develop given this dynamic between efficiency, computer improvement and regulation.
We can imagine a situation where only the current “experts” are kept on as doctor staff that checks the machines; while the need for “junior” doctors or nurses are no longer needed since an increasing percentage of the work is displaced using AI. On the surface, this seems like it may even be a good thing. However the part that is unclear to me (and others I’m sure), is the pathway by which a “junior” doctor becomes regarded as an “expert” doctor. How does one become an expert practitioner with increasing reliance on machine learning? or asked another way, what can you do to show you’re an expert?
Either
- The need (or interest) for junior doctors, and therefore the number of doctors will be radically reduced (fewer and fewer “experts” to draw upon)
- or the experiences that enables a doctor to be regarded as an expert or a specialist are no longer the same. In other words, the progression of competence in medicine (or anything) will look so different given less people and more machines that it’s unclear how one becomes extremely efficient without the human-lead experiences.
If a doctors’ progression will be the same but only facilitated by the “iPad”, at some point it will be difficult to suggest that the human is anymore competent than the machine diagnostics (since the human’s medical competency is nothing more than a byproduct of the machine). On the contrary, current experts have reached their level of prestige because of human-experience, interaction & organic learning AND the machine has merely supplemented their learning. There is a reversal taking place where people are less involved.
Future
At least how it’s currently structured, it’s not clear how one becomes knowledgeable enough to earn their keep without having human experiences; and yet, machine capabilities are only advancing for newer generations of professionals.
At some point, these experts will be retire and a new generation of doctor will be required to check the boxes to fulfill regulation requirements–but who is capable to do this?
It seems to me that healthcare itself is changing (and I am picking on healthcare because of my own personal story & previous studies but it applies to all service professionals), where the expert of the field will be far more technological-oriented, detached and time efficient due to programmability rather than caring, personalized and independent-minded. They’ll be no room for individualistic, free-thought and the drug companies will love it (look at “medicine” in 2021)… The recommendation for a doctor to prescribe healthy sleep and exercise is long gone, pills, pills and more pills.
In this sense, junior doctors will still be able to progress to become experts in their own field, but their capacity to intervene will likely be greatly limited. Going to the doctor may look something like this:
Closing
The employment and services landscape is changing radically and quite quickly. The role of machine learning in not only every day searches but real practices like medicine is growing day by day. I assume that this progression will be so advanced that it too will displace medical professional jobs, but regulations will keep experts on staff for the future.
After a number of years of that playing out however–a gap of competency is likely going to commence where there is no obvious way of becoming an expert like their professional predecessors. Whereas before human-to-human interactions were merely supplemented by technology; now, technology is the main interface and human-to-human interactions will likely supplement the professional experience.
This dynamic is likely going to create an even further feedback loop of robotic, corporate zombies, detached from their clients or customers with only sales in mind as opposed to friendly, connected healthcare providers (in terms of healthcare at least). It stands to reason that new generations of experts won’t have the same holistic experience and thus be a less qualified individual. This is coupled with a less and less interest & prestige associated with these positions as they merit less and less independence. This same gap of expertise is applicable in a number of domains such as law, construction, dentistry and pharmacy.
Is this for the better? Is medicine and law best practiced with pure “right and wrong” answers justifying the displacement and replacement of jobs? Or is this going to end up making everyone’s lives more miserable in the long run, both indirectly and directly?
What do you think? Are you seeing this develop already?
