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Advancements in artificial intelligence have already begun to threaten the roles of medical experts, as one doctor shares a video that shows AI completing a task that took them 'decades' of experience to learn.
Many of the fears surrounding AI's destabilization of the job world have revolved around the supposedly 'simple' roles that will soon be eclipsed by advancements in the tech industry - if they haven't yet already.
Experts have outlined the roles most at risk of AI-based redundancies over the past couple of years, and they broadly fall in line with the written or image-based tasks that many already use tools like ChatGPT to complete.
However, recent months have shown that AI is already capable of completing complex tasks that would otherwise take years, if not decades, for humans to master, and it's struck fear in many professionals.
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That has already happened in the programming world, which many believed would be among the last to be hit by AI. It comes as Mark Zuckerberg has revealed that he aims to have 50% of Meta's coding completed by AI agents.
One unexpected area that has been worryingly targeted is medicine, as doctors now have to contend with their expertise being matched and potentially even aped by artificial intelligence.
Shared on TikTok by pulmonologist @dr.fawzikatranji, the video captioned 'I'm going to lose my job' shows how AI is able to spot issues in a X-ray that took him over 20 years of experience to identify.
"This is scary because I developed this skill over 20 years, I just boom look at an X-ray and go 'Oh, here we have right-middle lobe pneumonia, maybe left-upper lobe consolidation, patient is very sick she has bilateral pneumonia, we need to take of her," Dr. Fawzi explains.
He then cuts to what looks like Lunit INSIGHT CXR, which is an AI-powered X-ray analysis tool, and that has used heat mapping to identify the exact issues that Dr. Fawzi talked about in mere seconds, without needing his own expertise.
"Here comes AI and, of course, they pick it up in a second. So now you don't need professional eyes to look at these X-rays, you just have artificial intelligence and they picked up the pneumonia," he continued. "So I'm going to be applying to McDonald's soon I hope they have some openings."
One thing that could perhaps protect Dr. Fawzi's and many others like him from AI-based redundancies is the regulatory protections within the healthcare world that value human interpretation and expertise.
This has been echoed by an AI expert who, despite believing that the tech to displace doctors will exist, thinks that regulation will make the medical world a difficult area for artificial intelligence to truly breach.
Many in the comments of Dr. Fawzi's video also appear to agree with this sentiment, valuing the approach and viewpoint of an actual doctor over AI, even if they produce similar results in this instance.
"Just because AI can do that, doesn't mean it's 100% correct all the time," writes one comment, with another adding that they "don't care if it costs extra, I'd much rather have a doctor and AI working in tandem than having AI diagnosing me alone."
