The future of AI is not Black & White, but it isn't colorful either.

I am a big believer and advocate for using technology for the better. In a respectful, ethical, and responsible way, technology can augment many of the repetitive tasks that are being done within healthcare. On the other hand, we also need to be mindful not only of who is selling us this prosperous future for healthcare in particular, but also of taking the right steps within guardrails and making sure that it is a sustainable operation.

Sustainable both in terms of impacts on climate and sustainable as in redundancy, as there is no such thing in healthcare as "just let's try it again if technology stops."

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When we rely on tools that might not be there

What would happen if we completely rely on the availability and accuracy of tools built with AI that, in the end, due to lack of power or other outages, will not be able to augment and assist us in the way that we assume when we design it? That can happen based on technological issues, but it can also happen if the future is going to be different than many tech bros want us to believe.

The open-weight question

One area, as an example, is: what if there will be open-source or open-weight models for a fraction of the price with almost the same outcome? Assuming the progress of these open-weight models will improve, what will we choose in healthcare?

At the moment, at least, I'm sure that the increase in price per token will not be a sustainable one, not for healthcare nor for the rest of society. I think that is something missing in the debates and marketing that I see around this topic.

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Let me know what you think and how you are approaching this within your organization.

Source: Originally published on LinkedIn