What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future - The A.I. Will See You Now
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3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 26 January 2025
⏱️ 22 minutes
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Summary
Artificial intelligence is coming to a doctor’s office near you—if it isn’t already there, working in an administrative role. Are you ready for generative A.I. to help your doctor diagnose you? Is your doctor ready to listen—with the necessary mix of humility and skepticism?
Guest: Geoffrey Fowler, Washington Post tech columnist.
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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, Patrick Fort, and Cheyna Roth.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Not too long ago, Jeff Fowler went to the doctor for a checkup. |
| 0:09.5 | So I sit down in front of him and he says, hey, Jeff, would you mind if I use an AI agent to listen to us during our session today? |
| 0:21.4 | Okay. |
| 0:22.1 | So this is when I explained that while Jeff was getting a checkup, |
| 0:26.6 | he was also reporting a story. |
| 0:29.4 | Jeff is a tech columnist at the Washington Post, |
| 0:31.5 | and he went to see a doctor at Stanford, Christopher Sharp, |
| 0:34.9 | who is studying new technologies to help deliver care. |
| 0:38.7 | In this case, AI. |
| 0:41.0 | And I said, is that going to be private? |
| 0:45.3 | And he said, yes, absolutely, it's going to be private. |
| 0:48.1 | We'll delete the recording when we're done. |
| 0:50.3 | Basically, the AI is going to take notes instead of me. |
| 0:53.7 | So I can spend the time focused on you. |
| 0:56.6 | Did it feel different? Or did it just feel like a doctor's appointment? It did feel different. |
| 1:01.6 | You know, for the last decade at least, when I've gone to the doctor, I would say the doctor spends |
| 1:06.4 | more time looking at a screen and typing than they do spend looking at me. During this entire visit, |
| 1:14.3 | Dr. Sharp looked at me. And so we were able to connect that way, which is really useful. He also |
| 1:21.3 | would say out loud things that a doctor wouldn't necessarily normally say out loud, |
| 1:26.4 | like when he was taking my blood pressure or listening to my lungs, he would sort of call out as if he was speaking to some |
| 1:31.6 | assistant who was there in the room. And that assistant turned out to be an AI. |
| 1:36.9 | That might sound pretty intriguing to have a doctor look at you and not down at their keyboard. |
... |
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