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The timing couldn’t be better.Just as an Anthropic safety researcher resigned over the company’s irresponsible behavior and another researcher warned that AI developers are creating systems with a 10% chance of killing all humans in the next decade, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is enthusiastically lobbying our medical system to entrust AI to become our primary physicians.Now, as a physician who has practiced internal medicine for nearly 30 years, I appreciate Emanuel’s enthusiasm. I really do. But he is simply wrong.When it comes to our best and worst moments in life, we will always want another person with us.Let’s begin with his recent essay in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the flagship journal of internal medicine. Citing “studies” showing AI-only medical care is likely to be better than physician-alone or AI-physician hybrid care, Emanuel identifies five AI-superior areas: eliciting medically relevant information; establishing a differential diagnosis; specifying diagnostic testing; prescribing guideline-concordant treatment; managing chronic diseases.But the devil is in the details.First, none of the studies Emanuel cites meets the gold standard: a randomized, double-blind, multicenter, placebo-controlled trial with hard clinical end points. Instead, he relies largely on small observational studies, simulated clinical cases, and meta-analyses. Each has limitations that complicate any attempt to draw definitive clinical conclusions.If anything, these studies raise more questions than answers. This is no problem if Emanuel’s assertion is that we need to perform more studies. However, when he repurposes his JAMA articles into a jaunty Atlantic Monthly essay, he insists that cautious medical minds are “ignor[ing] available evidence and could hold untold numbers of Americans back from better health.”My question to Emanuel is, in light of his low-quality studies, what sound, available evidence?Second, Emanuel seems enamored with algorithms. Established clinical pathways can provide valuable, evidence-based guidance for evaluating symptoms, treating disease, and determining the standard of care. But experienced physicians know that clinical judgment cannot be reduced to an algorithm.Our patients and their problems are not simply algorithmic. Every day, physicians encounter complexities and confounders, curveballs, and exceptions. We need more than book knowledge and flowcharts. Open-mindedness, intuition, and common sense — all of which are born of experience.Emanuel strikes me as one of the rationalists that stirred up philosopher Michael Oakeshott’s ire. The rationalists are those who worship at the altar of technical knowledge (knowledge of experts that can be written in a book), yet blithely dismiss indispensable practical knowledge (knowledge gained by life and experience). It seems good in theory, but it all falls apart in practice.RELATED: You can medicate despair. You can’t manufacture meaning. Merovingian/Getty ImagesThird, Emanuel has great confidence in consensus statements and practice guidelines. These are recommended diagnostic paths or treatment plans offered by august bodies of medical deliberation or the best available evidence. Sadly, most of this evidence is moderate to weak at best.As Abba Eban once observed, “A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually.” While AI draws from an immense fund of knowledge, physicians (while using AI) can add wisdom that asserts purifying qualifiers such as “it depends” or “up to a point.”If Emanuel’s further criticism is that human beings are hampered by their propensity for error, is it not error-laden human knowledge that informs artificial intelligence? Inadvertently and ironically, the muddled human condition is baked into artificial intelligence.Finally, Emanuel seemingly forgets about the human touch. Surely, as a capable oncologist, he recalls moments when he pushed away from the computer, took off his glasses, leaned forward, and truly engaged with the patient. At that moment of profound and unfettered intentionality, the luminous wonder of the physician-patient relationship came vibrantly alive.Are we to be convinced that this relationship doesn’t matter? That it is simply an expendable byproduct in a life’s journey through sickness and health? The iconic 19th-century godfather of medicine, Dr. William Osler, would be aghast at such an assertion. “The good doctor treats the disease,” he once insisted. ‘The great doctor treats the patient who has the disease.”RELATED: Now they’re saying the AIs built ‘secret civilizations’ — the truth is far worse Ole_CNX/Getty ImagesPerhaps the studies will come. Perhaps, at some point, artificial intelligence will demonstrably outperform physicians (or even physicians aided by AI), and we who practice will need to bow to our computerized overlords as they, like C-3PO, dispense medical wisdom with their soothing metallic voices and remarkable programmed empathy.But I’m not convinced.There is a story of a man openly weeping in a massive crowd upon hearing of the death of President Franklin Roosevelt in 1945. A nearby reporter approached him and asked if he personally knew the president. “No, I didn’t know President Roosevelt,” he answered. “But he knew me.”When it comes to our best and worst moments in life, we will always want another person with us. Someone who can help us, who cares about us, and who knows us.Artificial intelligence is a wondrous tool, but it doesn’t know us. Find a good physician who does....Read More
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A violent criminal who had been convicted of rape and was on the run was found dead in San Diego, police say.Merle Wakefield, 69, was being supervised on California's conditional release program when officials got a tamper notice from his monitoring device on Sept. 25.'As long as the state keeps releasing sexually violent predators into our neighborhoods, families are one tampered ankle monitor away from this. These people don't belong anywhere near our communities.'When the officials arrived at his workplace in Rancho Bernardo, they found the GPS device, but Wakefield was gone.Nearly a month later on Monday at about 9:30 a.m., San Diego police responded to a report of a dead body and found human remains in a riverbed in San Diego.The San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office identified the remains as Merle Wakefield. His cause and manner of death will be determined by an autopsy.The rapist's remains were found about 20 miles south of the location where he was last seen.Wakefield had been convicted of rape as well as lewd acts with a minor under 14, along with eight other convictions and 20 arrests.He was granted conditional release in Nov. 2024.It's unclear how Wakefield died.San Diego police said they are continuing to investigate the man's death.RELATED: California man allegedly coerced 21 children to produce sex videos via online apps, FBI says San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond criticized the state of California after Wakefield vanished."The unfortunate reality is that what happened with Merle Wakefield could have happened at any time," Demond said."As long as the state keeps releasing sexually violent predators into our neighborhoods, families are one tampered ankle monitor away from this. These people don't belong anywhere near our communities. They belong locked up in a secure state facility. Period."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!...Read More
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Last weekend, hundreds of thousands of people across France marched in protest of living costs and deteriorating public services. Those marches were quickly overtaken by violent, masked groups who looted shops, set cars and buildings on fire, and clashed with police in cities including Paris, Marseille, Lyon, and Limoges.Even though more than 2,000 people were arrested, police largely failed to contain the chaos in several cities.But that chaos and destruction, says Glenn Beck, had “nothing to do with the schools” or any other valid grievance.It has everything to do, he argues, with the budget the French Parliament was scheduled to vote on yesterday, although it ended up being postponed to a later date. “The street was sending Paris a message before the vote, and the government is now stuck in a trap with no good door,” says Glenn.He explains how cutting spending infuriates the mob because it means fewer services, but not cutting spending worsens the debt crisis, which also infuriates the mob.“If they vote it down, the lenders get nervous and the interest rates climb. Then the borrowing costs rise. Then the jobs disappear, and everything costs more, which is exactly what the people are marching about in the first place, so either way somebody loses,” he says.The best-case scenario, says Glenn, is they “agree on a budget” and vow to “pay this loan back,” even if it means financial constraints. If the meeting “falls apart,” however, he predicts a snowball effect, where lenders raise France’s borrowing costs, the government has to borrow even more just to cover its bills, rates climb farther, and the debt spiral spreads pressure across Europe while France’s ability to fund basic services keeps shrinking.“That's Italy. That's Greece. That's Germany, and it's already starting. Their borrowing costs went up this month, and France now pays more to borrow than either of them,” says Glenn.The third potential outcome is what will happen if the budget falls apart and nobody does anything about it. In this scenario, the European Central Bank will either step in with harsh conditions that make daily life even harder and fuel more unrest — or break its own rules to bail France out, which signals that the rules no longer matter and spreads the crisis further.This should matter to Americans, says Glenn, because America is teetering on the same debt trap as France — spending more than it earns. And if lenders lose confidence in the U.S. the way they’re losing confidence in France, Americans will feel it in higher mortgage rates, higher car payments, and job losses.To hear more, watch the video above.Want more from Glenn Beck?To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream....Read More
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