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On the note of doctors, the medical guild has always been the most robust, perhaps other than lawyers, at defending its monopoly. I would be willing to bet doctors still resist automation through regulatory barriers for quite a while.
Even if that doesn’t shake out, it could be a scenario where human augmentation rolls out relatively slowly. You, being a transhumanist, Should greatly benefit in a lot of those scenarios. I imagine the vast majority of people alive today will be unwilling to augment them selves for purity-based reasons. Not having that hangup alone would be a huge competitive advantage.
If all else fails you can always mortgage your future computing space for a loan or some thing and hope to jump up into the immortal class. I for one hope can you make it, although I will admit that I am not the most optimistic when it comes to proles getting access to longevity technology.
Doctors have successfully defender their guild (albeit more so in the US than the UK, by a large margin) because they were indispensable. Training replacements to disgruntled doctors would take a great deal of time, and while medical education isn't perfect, you can't really circumvent most of it without ending up with noticeably worse practitioners.
That changes greatly when human doctors become outright obsolete, speaking in the UK context, I have little doubt that the government would happily tell all involved to take a hike if that was the cost of "saving" the NHS or even saving money.
Doctors in the UK have been cucked to put it mildly haha. They've only recently grown a backbone after the wage decreases have become unbearable.
The UK government(s) have historically relied on immigrant doctors to prop up the NHS when the locals started getting fed up about it. I can't complain about this too much, given that I intend to emigrate soon, but this certainly is responsible in part for their depressed wages.
A government willing to sideline its populace with immigrants will happily do so with AI as and when feasible, and they've already stated that that's their intent.
I could live with postponing the singularity a few years till we get it right, but that's seemingly not on the table.
(I mildly disagree that most people won't avail of transhuman upgrades. Eventually they'll end up normalized, in much the same way nobody really makes a fuss about glasses, hearing aids or pacemakers.)
This is where we disagree - I don't see human doctors becoming obsolete anytime soon. Perhaps from a medical perspective, sure, but for the majority of laypeople I'd imagine a large part of a doctor's job is comforting the person they're treating.
Now I do think that like with almost all knowledge work, doctors will be able to become more productive. Especially those that don't see patients most of the day. But my understanding is that the vast majority of, say, a primary care physician's job is to go from 30 min patient visit to 30 min patient visit, hearing what people have to say and writing it down, then telling them they're going to be okay and the doctor can help.
Even if we can prove that LLMs give better medical advice than doctors 100% of the time, I don't think the majority of people would be comfortable hearing it from a non-doctor for quite a while.
You don't think accelerating progress now could be the best way to reach alignment?
Depends on the speed of the takeoff, I suppose.
Yes, reassurance and a good bedside manner are important aspects of a doctor's role! That being said, I can see AI doing all of that too:
Humans will anthromorphize anything, so a cutesy robot face on a monitor or even a deepfaked one might work. Proof of concept: Telemedicine.
Otherwise unskilled individuals who are simply conveying the information provided by an AI, such as a deskilled doctor or nurse, only there as a pretty face. Still utterly catastrophic for the profession.
People get used to anything, eventually when the public cottons onto the fact that AI doctors are faster, cheaper and better than humans, they'll swallow their discomfort and go with it.
Hmm, deepfakes for telemedicine would be concerning. I get your point with #2 as well, although I think that'll take some time to roll out.
I see what you mean I suppose the medical profession might be on the way out. I was supposed to be the optimistic one! Alas.
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Is that true? I don't think I know anyone who thinks that, or anything even remotely close to it.
Every time I've interacted with medical professionals over the past several years, there has been no emotional component at all, or mildly negative. Doctors are able to diagnose, proscribe, and conduct operations, otherwise people would stay far away.
For instance: family member was pretty sure he had pneumonia. Went to a hospital, got an x-ray. Yep, that's pneumonia alright, here are two antibiotics that might help, come back if you're just as bad or worse in a week (edit: these were, as I remember, not actually given at the hospital. We had to drive to the pharmacy for them). The antibiotics worked, hooray. In addition to $500 upfront and $1,000 from insurance, there was another $1,000 surprise charge, botched and shuttled about through bill collection, which took six months to resolve. Next time family member has pneumonia, he'll probably hold out even longer before attempting to interface with the medical system.
I'm glad that for a couple of hours of wretched interactions, trying to hand write forms alone and delirious, and two week's pay, family member was able to get needed medicine. This is better than the vast majority of times and places. But if there were an automated scanner that dispensed antibiotics, that would be vastly better experience.
I also gave birth during the ending phase of Covid restrictions. I'm glad that there are medical interventions to deal with complications and manage pain. But there is not really any comforting being done that couldn't be replaced with a recorded voice stating what's on the fetal monitor and what it means.
All the people I know generally think of your average medical care professional as an opponent that you have to outsmart or out-research before you are permitted bodily autonomy and usually know less about your body than you do if you have an IQ over 120.
They'd drop them for an uncensored medical expertise AI in a second.
I would drop doctors as well but I’m trying to model the modal human. Maybe I’m failing but I think people here are far into an intelligence/tech literate bubble.
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The flat affect, 'no emotional component' is what I mean. They are giving a sort of impartial authority to their diagnosis to make you feel okay.
I disagree with doctors, but many of the people I know in the middle-class PMC take their word as Truth.
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