Despite the hype over artificial intelligence in medicine, the systems require consistent monitoring and staffing to put in place and maintain. Checking whether an algorithm has developed the software equivalent of a blown gasket can be complicated — and expensive.
In other words, an AI-supported radiologist should spend exactly the same amount of time considering your X-ray, and then see if the AI agrees with their judgment, and, if not, they should take a closer look. AI should make radiology more expensive, in order to make it more accurate.
But that’s not the AI business model. AI pitchmen are explicit on this score: The purpose of AI, the source of its value, is its capacity to increase productivity, which is to say, it should allow workers to do more, which will allow their bosses to fire some of them, or get each one to do more work in the same time, or both. The entire investor case for AI is “companies will buy our products so they can do more with less.” It’s not “business customers will buy our products so their products will cost more to make, but will be of higher quality.”
Oh hey, this same quote is relevant yet again:
Cory Doctorow: What Kind of Bubble is AI?