On: Towards Conversational AI for Disease Management

Well I’ll be switched, they’re teaching machines to play doctor now. And not just any doctor - the kind that makes house calls without the horse, or the saddle sores. I read this piece in Nature about a conversational AI for disease management, and my first thought was, “How long before the computer starts writing its own prescriptions in Latin?” I reckon about as long as it takes a politician to write a bill nobody reads.

Now I don’t know much about neural networks, but I do know when a man’s got the grippe he don’t want some cold voice on a screen asking him to rate his pain on a scale of one to ten. He wants his neighbor’s wife to bring him some chicken soup and tell him he’ll live. That’s the medicine that works. This AI might diagnose you faster than a vet, but I ain’t seen it yet that can look a man in the eye and say, “You’re gonna be alright.”

They say it’s all about access, that folks in remote places need care. I say they need a doctor who knows the difference between a rattlesnake bite and a bee sting, not a server farm in Silicon Valley. I’ve seen more good come from a country nurse with a black bag and a pocketful of gumption than from any machine that’s ever been built. And if that nurse needs help, she can ask her neighbor, not some algorithm that’s never held a thermometer.

So here’s to progress, I guess. Just don’t ask me to trust it with my appendix. I’ll keep my horse saddled, thank you very much.