BULLSHIT!
That’s what I found myself yelling at a recent board meeting, unimpeded by my usual filters of propriety or self-restraint. But I couldn’t help myself. The board was debating whether AI was going to come for all of our jobs, and someone had just referenced an article which said it wouldn’t be long before AI was doing the work of most doctors, lawyers, and – this is where I broke – writers.
The surprised board members turned to me for an explanation, and I reddened a bit. Sure, I was defensive, but I knew I couldn’t make a cogent argument without taking the entire meeting down a rabbit hole. My words hung in the air for a moment, then thankfully the CEO moved the dialog toward unrelated topics. That was that.
But I can’t shake the sense that we’re thinking about AI all wrong. Scary headlines keep framing the narrative in a rivalrous way – AI is coming for us! We’re not ready! But my own experience – and that of many other professionals – contradict that framing.
When, if ever, will AI replace doctors? That’s the question driving the “Great Debate” at DOC this year. That “if ever” is doing most of the work here. DOC gathers 300 leaders in science, medicine, technology, and media – including about 75 M.D. and Ph.ds. Are they really all about to be replaced?
This morning I asked Claude, Gemini, Google, and Perplexity the same question: “Find recent news articles about how AI is replacing or changing white collar work.” The results were unanimous: “Traditionally secure professions such as finance, legal services, and technology are increasingly susceptible to AI-driven disruption,” Perplexity opined. “Rapid advancements are raising serious questions about job security in various sectors,” Google told me. And Google, Gemini and Claude all warned me about “The White-Collar Recession of 2025” – a reference to a heaping mound of corporate opportunism from Salesforce, an “AI first” company that is more than happy to appease terrified white collar workers by selling them…more AI. Why three of four AI services view a Salesforce “research report” as authoritative is worth exploring, but my point’s been made: Anyone researching AI’s impact on white collar work will certainly be led to believe that the end is nigh.
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So, is it all bullshit? Absolutely. But that doesn’t mean things won’t change. Ten years from now I predict we’ll have plenty of lawyers, doctors, and yes, even writers amongst us. And all of us will likely have one thing in common: We’ve mastered how to use AI as a tool, just like we’ve mastered how to use computers, phones, word processing, search, and the Internet. Because in the end, AI is a tool. And like all tools that drive new economics and new use cases, AI will likely create more jobs than it erases – 78 million more, if the World Economic Forum is to be believed.
Case in point: You may have seen the headlines about the Chinese startup that is launching a medical clinic staffed only by AI doctors. My hot take: Good! If it works and can scale, these kinds of clinics will not only bring quality care at affordable prices to many more people, they’ll also create plenty of new jobs for actual doctors. No one is going to trust a diagnosis that hasn’t been validated by a real M.D. – which is exactly how the Chinese startup’s model works.
The world needs more doctors, not less, and if we can find ways to scale doctoring, I’m all for it. Things are pretty shitty over in the world of (sick)care right about now, so sure, let’s find ways to put new tools to work! Oh, and remember how AI was going to kill all those M.D.s in radiology? Not so fast. Thanks to AI, the field is actually expanding.
In a world where AI can let anyone impersonate a doctor, a lawyer, or – shudder – a writer, trust will only come by scaling the judgement and context that humans alone can provide. I’ve seen AI-derived pieces of writing that seem fabulous on first glance, but every one of them has fallen apart under the rigor of what we in the journalism business call “a decent editor.” A decent editor will always question your sourcing, your facts, and your conclusions. Despite what we’re all being told, I don’t think that function is ever going to disappear – not in law, not in medicine, and certainly not in writing.
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