The A.I. Radiologist Will Not Be with You Soon

Summary

Nine years ago, one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence scientists singled out an endangered occupational species.“People should stop training radiologists now,” Geoffrey Hinton said, adding that it was “just completely obvious” that within five years A.I. would outperform humans in that field.Today, radiologists — the physician specialists in medical imaging who look inside the body to diagnose and treat disease — are still in high demand. A recent study from the American College of Radiology projected a steadily growing work force through 2055.Dr. Hinton, who was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics last year for pioneering research in A.I., was broadly correct that the technology would have a significant impact — just not as a job killer.That’s true for radiologists at the Mayo Clinic, one of the nation’s premier medical systems, whose main campus is in Rochester, Minn. There, in recent years, they have begun using A.I. to sharpen images, automate routine tasks, identify medical abnormalities and predict disease. A.I. can also serve as “a second set of eyes.”“But would it replace radiologists? We didn’t think so,” said Dr. Matthew Callstrom, the Mayo Clinic’s chair of radiology, recalling the 2016 prediction. “We knew how hard it is and all that is involved.”Computer scientists, labor experts and policymakers have long debated how A.I. will ultimately play out in the work force. Will it be a clever helper, enhancing human performance, or a robotic surrogate, displacing millions of workers?The debate has intensified as the leading-edge technology behind chatbots appears to be improving faster than anticipated. Leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic and other companies in Silicon Valley now predict that A.I. will eclipse humans in most cognitive tasks within a few years. But many researchers foresee a more gradual transformation in line with seismic inventions of the past, like electricity or the internet.The predicted extinction of radiologists provides a telling cas...