Mutaz Musa’s recent opinion piece in The Scientist predicts that AI will replace radiologists as interpreters of medical images. As a radiologist for the past 38 years, I disagree. It is impossible for me to argue that AI software will never (as in, within millennia) be able to perform at a human level. Instead, I will argue a much more tightly defined set of premises: A) Our function is far more than simply recognizing white spots, something that does not appear to be understood by those predicting our replacement, and B) such predictions being aggressively promoted can be harmful to the health of both patients and the healthcare system.
Premise one: Most think that seeing spots is our work. Actually, knowing what spots are and what they mean in a specific patient is the true work of radiologists.
To illustrate, consider this image:
I sent this image to be processed ...
