Author’s note: The Amazon Prime show The Power, based on Naomi Alderman’s book, flips the gender power construct 180 degrees. By doing so, the show (and book) show us how when certain things happen to men, they become shocking and unbelievable. Whereas for women, it’s just our day-to-day lives. I wrote this piece as an…
Comments closedAn April 28 article in JAMA Internal Medicine, “Comparing Physician and Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Responses to Patient Questions Posted to a Public Social Media Forum,” generated a great deal of discussion — much of it horrified. In particular, people are focusing on the study’s conclusions: that “chatbot responses were longer than physician responses, and the study’s…
Comments closedMy debut novel, The Algorithm Will See You Now, is a speculative medical thriller set in near-future Seattle, where the implementation of artificial intelligence algorithms to guide—and limit—healthcare turns out to be, in the end, subject to its human creators’ flaws. The book’s publication on 3/2/2023 coincided with the explosion of AI in the media…
Comments closedWell before the advent of chat GPT, popular culture has explored how technology might affect health care, often with a dystopian bent. Take, for example, the 2013 sci-fi movie Elysium, set in 2154 (spoilers ahead). Matt Damon’s character, Max, is exposed to a lethal dose of radiation when his factory supervisor threatens to fire him if…
Comments closedI’m so grateful for the Pitch Wars community and my mentorship with them in 2019! For those unfamiliar, Pitch Wars was a mentoring program where published/agented authors, editors, or industry interns chose one writer each, read their entire manuscript, and offered suggestions on how to make the manuscript shine for an agent showcase. The mentor also…
Comments closedAbout five years ago, I did the first public reading of my non-academic writing. I was a 40-something-year-old physician, and I was terrified. It was at a narrative medicine event, and I’d been selected to read one of my personal essays. A few days earlier, an experienced performer had given me some pointers. Identified which…
Comments closedIt’s Okay Not To Write Every Day Many people are proponents of writing consistently every day and setting goals. For example, 1000 words a day. But what if you can’t write every day. If you have a demanding day job or a busy family, or maybe, I don’t know, you just don’t like writing every…
Comments closedIn one word, humbling. I am 49 years old, and my first novel, a speculative thriller called The Algorithm Will See You Now, published on 3/2/2023. I started writing it when I was 43. When I was 46, I ventured into the online writing world, mainly via Twitter. A social media newbie (I know, I know,…
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