STAT+: AI doomerism: Here’s how to make sense of it

This is the web edition of STAT’s AI Prognosis newsletter, our subscriber-exclusive guide to artificial intelligence in health care and medicine. Sign up to get it delivered in your inbox every Wednesday. *Bernie Sanders voice* I am once again asking you to … forward this email to a friend! Non-subscribers can now sign up to get (a truncated version of) AI Prognosis. Tell ya buddies and coworkers! Also, tell your buddies about this essay from our new trust-in-science reporter, Nick Florko. Faced with health problems, he’s tried diets, supplements, and peptides — he understands the allure of non-scientifically backed treatments, and wants to listen to skeptics as he writes about doubt, misinformation, and distrust. Making sense of AI doomerism Over the last couple weeks, the fervor about whether AI will kill us all and needs to be slowed has continued on at a rolling boil. At STAT, we’ve discussed whether we need to write about it. But I have qualms: Firstly, the kind of nefarious AI that could potentially lead to human extinction is so far removed from still-error-prone health care AI that it’s almost impossible to talk about both at the same time. Then: Is this all marketing, as Anthropic and OpenAI prepare to go public? Are all of the recently disclosed AI safety incidents actually just examples of AI companies’ basic incompetence at cybersecurity and infrastructure skills, packaged to make the AI look impossibly smart? And then there’s the matter of finding someone who knows enough about AI to talk about it knowledgeably, but who also doesn’t have any incentive to frame it one way or another. (More on that in the next section.) In today’s issue, I’ll refer you to a few good reads in a few different areas (general AI, health care, and biology) to help make sense of this. STAT+ Exclusive Story Already have an account? Log in This article is exclusive to STAT+ subscribers Unlock this article — plus in-depth analysis, newsletters, premium events, and news alerts. Already have an account? Log in View All Plans To read the rest of this story subscribe to STAT+. Subscribe