Regarding AI: Will Humans Lose Their Jobs?

Medical Patents Broker Inc.
By Kenneth Pearce, President

Regarding AI, everybody seems to have an opinion: One prevalent school of thought is that humans will lose their jobs...

I don’t have time to watch the so-called news. There’s just too much that needs doing. Besides, if it’s really important, I’ll know without the media's broadcasting cycle.

From listening to others, it appears at least some believe that Artificial Intelligence is a job killer. Even in one of those science fiction movies where the bots were in control, there were still humans that were working. The last time I was at the movies was 1990. Much has changed since then, but I don’t think AI has feelings, generates inspiration or expresses love/hatred.

If I remember correctly, there is a constant known as, “an equal and opposite reaction.” So, when AI closes one area of human work, a new human workspace is established. Over the millennia, other earlier technologies were forecast to eliminate jobs, but that didn’t happen. Many seem to forget that the wheel is still around.

SOME POSITIVES FOR AI

A. AI Improves Healthcare To The Patient

1. The Great Administrative Offload

Right now, highly trained doctors, nurses, and medical laboratory technicians spend lots of time filling out electronic and paper health records, battling insurance codes, dealing with resubmissions for reimbursements, and managing unnecessary paperwork.

When AI talks directly to CMS and insurance carriers, computers speak the identical language. As a result, humans can turn to the business of caring for the patient. Someone could even have the idea to streamline the hospital discharge process. Since patients now have digital access to their electronic records, they can be wheeled to the car without a bag full of identical paper records to carry home. If I remember correctly, one of the stated purposes of that Congressional Act was to reduce paper records, not increase paper records.

2. The Rise of Care Coordinators

AI can flag risks and analyze data at lightning speed, but it cannot hold a patient’s hand, deliver a difficult diagnosis, navigate a family through a complex treatment plan, or pray with the family. Quicker diagnoses will require more Care Coordinators, Patient Navigators, and Holistic Health and Spiritual experts to softly assist in managing the patient’s treatment or passing.

B. The Explosion of Innovation and Next-Gen Roles

Every time technology makes a process more efficient, it lowers the barrier to entry. This will likely drive a massive wave of medical inventions. More inventions create more jobs. It’s the proverbial wheel on steroids.

1. Clinical Trial Acceleration Teams

Historically, designing a clinical trial took months or years. Today, AI can simulate molecular interactions and identify patient cohorts in days. In the future, the timeframe will be even less. Because the bottleneck at the front end of drug discovery is disappearing, a massive wave of new therapeutics can enter the pipeline, which creates more competition.

Aren’t we taught that competition is good for healthcare? Could this increase the demand for clinical trial managers, regulatory specialists, data verification experts, and occupations yet to be created?

2. AI Bio-Technicians, Maintenance Engineers, and Builders

There will be a great demand for the “nuts and bolts” guys who keep AI functioning at optimal capacity. There will also be a large demand for building skills to create the increasing number of AI farms that require massive amounts of electric current and water to power and cool. Yet, in due course, someone will invent something that is better than AI.

🎽 The President’s Viewpoint

Years ago, an MBA told me that over the decades the major stock indexes always increase in value. Seems like the waves of healthcare inventions follow a similar pattern.

Are you better off than your great, great or great, great, great grandparents who were just learning to bathe daily or weekly for the first time in history? At least when we sweat the economy and the various prognostications, we still have indoor plumbing and can take a shower to cool down.

AI works great as a tool! I like it. It increases my productivity, but AI can’t do something as simple as envision an invention while taking a shower and listening to Peer Gynt’s “Morning Mood.”