A brief mindset consideration for the rise of AI. I go from John Henry to Cancer Diagnosis, so very on brand for me.
Ironic enough to start the first entry on this as the end, but I'll skip the platitudes and banter to aim at why I’m writing. TL;DR, like the rest of everyone who’s done this I was busy. (Which, like everyone else, means they had the time but didn't care to.)
For the past 4 years of work, the main mission in my job was how to get things done faster. Just speed. Efficiency can come second. Of course, at-work efficiency and speed are parasitic to each other until you have a massive team, a genius, or someone who’s dealt with this problem before coming in and saving the day.
Then of course comes 2021 we hear about AI and by summer of 2022 the first enterprise-ready models come out.
I know everyone right now, who likely is using Ai in the smallest intentional points in their lives (like seeing the Meta AI logo on their instagram, or stuck using ChatGPT for homework) is thinking about the fear of automation, like jobs getting replaced and operations that required teams of skilled educated / uneducated workers to get something done in the most efficient way possible.
The thing is, in my line of work, this has been happening long before I was born. Work efficiencies, job replacements, job losses due to more advanced technologies. That’s happened before through 100s of years of iterative advancements in technology and corporate structure. The fear from the masses, in my perspective, is coming from the speed in iteration. We’ll most definitely see the loudest replacement of human to machine in most of our lifetimes.
I didn’t use the word largest. I don’t think it would be the largest in the way everyone is expecting. I think in terms of workers to machines, a bulk of humanity’s fears have been dissected through art, literature, and action already.
We’ve read about John Henry. Immigrants built America, and machinery was built on the back of immigrants. His story ends with him winning against the machine built to replace him and his coworkers, but at the cost of his life. History followed his story, and trains still replaced those like John whose lives were dependent on rail jobs. John knew that his war between man and machine was a loss before it ever began. He fought the battle anyway.
This is the most surface level example I could think of at-work efficiency I could think of. By now, everyone reading should be in a similar mindset. Now, let’s talk about at-work efficiency in medicine.
Here is the sheer amount of expertise needed for one cancer diagnosis and treatment:
I’m not going to even delve into the costs. But for many cancer types it could reach millions in care and maintenance expenses.
400 years of experience with up to 80 professionals is a lot. AI’s impact on resource availability and cost - even right now - has saved lives. But as AI advances, we would see its use in this stage of curing drop, alongside the amount of professionals needed in this sector.
The biggest issue in cancer diagnosis is that most weren’t detected earlier. Right now, the Apple Watch (latest version, 2024) detects your average body temperature and O2 levels, and can detect you getting sick nearly a week before you know you caught a cold or the flu.
Of course, Apple isn’t full-steam-ahead gunning their marketing department to promote this feature in advertisements because there are so many legal and safety nuances to the tech vs health conversation.
Yes, I agree that a John Henry of preventative care would be if not 99% then exactly as perfect as AI could possibly be with preventing cancers, but I am not worried about the battle. I want the war to be won.
If it means that the medical field has a large shift in specialization for the sake of preventing millions of deaths per year over the next 20-30 years, I say so be it, and I hope you do as well.
“What jobs would be safe?” “Is my job going to be replaced with AI?” I have no idea and whoever says they do are completely lying.
This was just to set the groundwork for what I actually wanted to talk about, in the next entry.
The rest of my thoughts i've written about.