The News
Predictions that artificial intelligence would replace radiologists have not, so far, materialized.
The “godfather of AI,” Geoffrey Hinton, said in 2016 that universities “should stop training radiologists now” because AI would outperform them in five years.
Instead, the number of US radiologists has gone up, and the field has become more efficient. It’s comparable to how ATMs did not replace bank tellers, but changed their roles, taking over routine tasks and freeing humans for more complex ones.
There are other models of technology’s economic impacts: Agricultural mechanization reduced farm worker numbers, but humans found other work. Horses, though, were straightforwardly replaced by the invention of the automobile. What path AI will take us down remains to be seen.