With self-driving cars and internet sites writing articles, Artificial Intelligence would seem to be the present hope for a glorious future upon planet earth. Yet, with self-driving cars still accident-prone and a slew of ridiculous AI-generated articles, maybe we should pause and ponder whether allowing AI to guide our health journey is wise. Maybe, just maybe, you don’t have a reason to worry right now, so AI seems like it at least won’t make things worse. Or possibly you have an illness, known or unknown, and AI might provide some insight on it… but not enough.
If you are looking to AI as the final answer in guiding your health journey, you should prepare for disappointment. AI’s fruit is ultimately dependent on who designed it and how they built it, vulnerable to all their mistakes and biases. Even if a thousand genius physicians pour medical knowledge into it, too, the magical dashboard printout that you read on a screen is only a start, assuming its accuracy. If you are not a medical provider yourself, you may easily find yourself with more data about your health and no more certainty about what you can actually do to get better.
If only all we needed to try was to pay someone online to run a bunch of tests, and then let their report uncover all that we need to know to live a healthier life. First among the problems here, even if you could afford every test known to man (plausible implementations of this scheme can provide only a limited number of tests, for cost reasons if nothing else), no AI can fully automate the interpretation. The tests only provide data which someone has to work with and apply to a thousand other factors about your health.
The AI only uses a set of rules to attempt a prediction. Sometimes those predictions can be quite helpful. Some online programs, however, can make a big deal out of numbers that don’t really matter. The difference between a result that’s 2 points into abnormality and one that’s 50 points into abnormality can be the difference between health and necessary therapies.
What am I getting at? Artificial Intelligence in the world of medicine, particularly in the real world situation of your health journey, functions only as a tool. Such tools can make the processing of vast amounts of data like genetics simpler and faster, but ultimately a real person with knowledge, wisdom, and experience must still wield the tool and its results to guide you.
Think of a mountain guide with a map. You could grab the map out of his hands and start hiking. You might do okay for a while unless you came upon some difficult terrain or a flash storm washed out a path. At some point, you will wish that you had let the guide keep the map- paper may be cheaper, but it can’t deal with a rockslide.
With your health journey being as critical to your well-being as hiking through the Appalachian trail in winter could be, you need someone you trust. Before you reach a point in your health journey where you need critical help beyond your own abilities or beyond the insight of an AI-generated health assessment, find a medical provider you can trust. You want someone that both knows medicine and cares about you as a person.
That provider will be your guide in the mountain paths of health when storms hit. They can use the AI tools combined with good old-fashioned intuition earned by years of experience to guide you through the mountain passes into better health ahead. I just don’t see that AI will ever fully replace the provider in understanding; moreover, in the end AI definitionally lacks the capacity to act with true compassion for those who are suffering.
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
