2025-06-19
Arvind Narayanan on X: “I find the story of AI and radiology fascinating. …” (via), commenting on A.I. Was Coming for Radiologists’ Jobs. So Far, They’re Just More Efficient. - The New York Times by Steve Lohr. A short piece looking at how the Mayo Clinic has integrated “AI” tools into radiology workflows. The headline is the juxtaposition with a Geoffrey Hinton comment from 2015 that predicted the demise of radiology as a profession within five years, which has not even slightly materialized, but has led to a great meme:
Maybe part of a soberer assessment of the likely impacts of AI over the coming years? The comment from Narayanan reminds me of the simpler framing in terms of labeled data — programs can solve problems better than humans, when we can define the problem clearly enough, and when we can get enough examples of the problem. Most jobs involve some problems like this, but the sum total of the problems is not “the job.”
Or maybe: we don’t really know what we want — we’re figuring it out, and changing our goals, as we go.