Episode 19 – AI in Clinical Medicine - Beyond Electric Sheep - A Podcast on AI

In this 11-minute episode of the Beyond Electric Sheep Podcast on AI, Ed Daniels and Brick Thompson discuss an AI application that Ed recently discussed with a large healthcare company. This application is in production and helps clinicians interact with patients about their care. Brick and Ed talk about the stringent requirements for such a system and discuss topics like where the AI’s data comes from, how the AI fits into into the patient-clinician interaction, and how patient safety (and company liability) are protected. They also talk about potential AI bias that needs to be avoided. One interesting conclusion is that both Brick and Ed would want to directly participate in the conversation with the AI. That would make it a clinician + patient + AI three-way conversation! 

The name of this podcast, Beyond Electric Sheep, is a reference to the novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K. Dick. That novel is the source for the movies Blade Runner (1982) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017). It explores the themes of artificial intelligence, empathy, and reality in a dystopian future where humans and androids coexist. 

The novel raises the question of whether androids can dream or feel anything at all, and whether they are different from humans in any meaningful way. In our Beyond Electric Sheep podcast we go beyond the novel and the movies and discuss the broader implications and applications of artificial intelligence in our personal lives and in our businesses. We explore the pragmatic as well as the ethical and philosophical issues that arise from creating and interacting with intelligent machines.

Beyond Electric Sheep is also available on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYg2J0jET_BPCKSnsxz8mleEmYogYJZhn