An 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 closedAs a cancer physician, the amount of data I obtain on my patients is ever-increasing, along with options for cancer therapies. This is, as the saying goes, a good problem to have, but the amount of data management oncologists must do after hours (because there isn’t enough time in the clinic day) to keep up…
Comments closedQuick post today to let you know that over on medmic.com, you can read an excerpt of my book! The Algorithm Will See You Now is a speculative thriller exploring the use of AI in healthcare. It releases on March 2nd, but you can still snag a preorder on Amazon or Black Rose Writing. And…
Comments closedAlgorithm Anarchist* – week of 2/16/23 It’s been a busy week of AI in the news! Let’s dive right in: 1. A Conversation With Bing’s Chatbot Left Me Deeply Unsettled Kevin Roose, technology columnist in The New York Times, wrote today about his interaction with Bing’s new chatbot, “Sydney.” His takeaway: “It’s now clear to…
Comments closedA weekly roundup of AI algorithms in the news Greetings readers! In my upcoming speculative thriller, The Algorithm Will See You Now, there’s a podcaster who dubs herself the “Algorithm Anarchist.” She’s trying to get the world to see the truth about Big Medicine conglomerate “PRIMA” — Prognostic Intelligent Medical Algorithms (but no spoilers). So…
Comments closedI haven’t done one of these year-end round-ups before, but given 2022 marked the five year anniversary of the blog, it seemed a good year to start. For each post, I’ve selected a favorite passage to highlight (different from the preview passage you’ll see on the home page). First, the top five most read blog…
Comments closed(hashtag satire, y’all) To: [Group: all employees] From: Office of the CEO Subject: A fork in the road Going forward, we will need to be extremely hardcore to streamline a restructured Health care 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly diseased world. This will mean working even longer hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will…
Comments closedThis weekend, after seeing others on social media post images from openAI’s DALL-E-2 art generator, I decided to give it a try. After thinking on a topic that (1) I am interested in, (2) others are interested in, and (3) I was curious to see an AI’s ability to interpret, I decided on the topic…
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