Think about the last time you felt let down by the health care system. You probably don’t have to go back far. In wealthy countries around the world, medical systems that were once robust are now crumbling. Doctors and nurses, tasked with an ever expanding range of responsibilities, are busier than ever, which means they have less and less time for patients. In the United States, the average doctor’s appointment lasts seven minutes. In South Korea, it’s only two.

Without sufficient time and attention, patients are suffering. There are 12 million significant misdiagnoses in the US every year, and 800,000 of those result in death or disability. (While the same kind of data isn’t available in Canada, similar trends are almost certainly happening here as well).

Eric Topol says medicine has become decidedly inhuman – and the consequences have been disastrous. Topol is a cardiologist and one of the most widely cited medical researchers in the world. In his latest book, Deep Medicine, he argues that the best way to make health care human again is to embrace the inhuman, in the form of artificial intelligence.

“Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again” by Eric Topol

“The frequency of diagnostic errors in outpatient care: estimations from three large observational studies involving US adult populations” by H. Singh, A. Meyer, E. Thomas

“Burden of serious harms from diagnostic error in the USA” by David Newman-Toker, et al.

“How Expert Clinicians Intuitively Recognize a Medical Diagnosis” by J. Brush Jr, J. Sherbino, G. Norman

“A Randomized Controlled Study of Art Observation Training to Improve Medical Student Ophthalmology Skills” by Jaclyn Gurwin, et al.

“Abridge becomes Epic’s First Pal, bringing generative AI to more providers and patients, including those at Emory Healthcare”

“Why Doctors Should Organize” by Eric Topol

“How This Rural Health System Is Outdoing Silicon Valley” by Erika Fry

Further Reading:

"The Importance Of Being" by Abraham Verghese

Earlier this year, Elon Musk’s company Neuralink successfully installed one of their brain implants in a 29 year old quadriplegic man named Noland Arbaugh. The device changed Arbaugh’s life. He no longer needs a mouth stylus to control his computer or play video games. Instead, he can use his mind.

The brain-computer interface that Arbaugh uses is part of an emerging field known as neurotechnology that promises to reshape the way we live. A wide range of AI empowered neurotechnologies may allow disabled people like Arbaugh to regain independence, or give us the ability to erase traumatic memories in patients suffering from PTSD.

But it doesn’t take great leaps to envision how these technologies could be abused as well. Law enforcement agencies in the United Arab Emirates have used neurotechnology to read the minds of criminal suspects, and convict them based on what they’ve found. And corporations are developing ways to advertise to potential customers in their dreams. Remarkably, both of these things appear to be legal, as there are virtually no laws explicitly governing neurotechnology.

All of which makes Nita Farahany’s work incredibly timely. Farahany is a professor of law and philosophy at Duke University and the author of The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology.

Farahany isn’t fatalistic about neurotech – in fact, she uses some of it herself. But she is adamant that we need to start developing laws and guardrails as soon as possible, because it may not be long before governments, employers and corporations have access to our brains.

“PRIME Study Progress Update – User Experience,” Neuralink

“Paralysed man walks using device that reconnects brain with muscles,” The Guardian

Cognitive Warfare – NATO’s ACT

The Ethics of Neurotechnology: UNESCO appoints international expert group to prepare a new global standard

When Eugenia Kuyda saw Her for the first time – the 2013 film about a man who falls in love with his virtual assistant – it didn’t read as science fiction. That’s because she was developing a remarkably similar technology: an AI chatbot that could function as a close friend, or even a romantic partner.

That idea would eventually become the basis for Replika, Kuyda’s AI startup. Today, Replika has millions of active users – that’s millions of people who have AI friends, AI siblings and AI partners.

When I first heard about the idea behind Replika, I thought it sounded kind of dystopian. I envisioned a world where we’d rather spend time with our AI friends than our real ones. But that’s not the world Kuyda is trying to build. In fact, she thinks chatbots will actually make people more social, not less, and that the cure for our technologically exacerbated loneliness might just be more technology.

Mentioned:

“ELIZA—A Computer Program For the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man And Machine” by Joseph Weizenbaum

“elizabot.js”, implemented by Norbert Landsteiner

“Speak, Memory” by Casey Newton (The Verge)

“Creating a safe Replika experience” by Replika

“The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion

Additional Reading:

The Globe & Mail: “They fell in love with the Replika AI chatbot. A policy update left them heartbroken”

“Loneliness and suicide mitigation for students using GPT3-enabled chatbots” by Maples, Cerit, Vishwanath, & Pea

“Learning from intelligent social agents as social and intellectual mirrors” by Maples, Pea, Markowitz