AI Won't Replace You

Tip: Press Listen Online 👆️ to have this email read to you by a fancy AI while you drive or work out.

Welcome back! I got a number of questions about AI after my last email referenced tech founders trying to replace doctors.

Tech is advancing so fast that nobody can predict what will happen. With that said, here’s what I predict will happen.

I’m not going to talk about a hypothetical Artificial General Intelligence that will battle humans for supremacy. Many experts actually think that is a real but very small possibility.

AI as we know it is not here to replace you. It’s a tool that makes people hyper-productive, which is great for now, and it keeps getting smarter (massive update below).

When one person becomes 2x, 5x, or 10x more productive, you don’t need as many people anymore. That’s what’s likely coming for healthcare.

On the surface, that sounds like a solution to the physician shortage. The U.S. is expected to be short 86,000 doctors in the next decade. In sub-Saharan Africa, there is a 10x bigger shortage. So, that productivity boost will be transformative for healthcare access worldwide.

But for the physicians, the big factor in what AI means for you is whether you are an employee or employer. All the net benefits of productivity gains in AI will go to the employers and the systems.

Unfortunately, physicians have overwhelmingly moved to being employees in the past decade. About 76% of all doctors are employees, compared to 25% in 2012!

So what does AI mean for all these employees?

Once AI makes doctors more productive, fewer will be needed. If AI makes a doctor even just 2x more efficient, that means half the number of doctors are necessary. We are talking about 450k doctors in the US who might end up superfluous in the coming years. And that’s even after the impending shortage is filled.

The system will always prioritize profits. They’re not going to keep extra staff around just because they like you. They’ll look for ways to cut costs. Midlevels are the fastest-growing healthcare profession by a huge margin for a reason. Compare midlevels to an AI that’s even more affordable, works 24/7, makes fewer errors, and can be smarter than most doctors in many tasks.

Most doctors rightfully thought of context as the missing factor in AI being able to do their jobs. Patients don’t explain their symptoms properly, history and documentation is scattered, its part visual and art, etc. All of those barriers have been solved with new AI systems that can take in a range of visual, auditory, and text inputs across more languages than any human can speak.

I know it sounds wild now, but the pace of AI’s growth is staggering. And it’s coming for medicine faster than most of us think. The clunky answers from ChatGPT are based on a general AI model that never learned any medicine.

AI models improving daily (update below: huge jump in AI capabilities this week). And its only a matter of time until they are trained on expert knowledge in your specialty. Capitalism guarantees it. That doesn’t mean AI will be autonomously doing your job without you. But again, the productivity increase means less of us are needed.

It’s coming for all industries at the same time. AI is now eating the world. There’s even real concern among the people building these AI tools, like Sam Altman of OpenAI/ChatGPT, that it could end capitalism because of the number of social services that will be needed to support all the knowledge professionals losing their jobs.

Therefore, the sixth-best reason to consider a tech hustle is to future-proof yourself. [If you missed it: Top 5 Reasons to Consider Tech for Your Next Hustle.] We’re headed toward a world where 50% of traditional medical jobs could disappear in the next decade or two.

It’s not all doom and gloom with AI. There are countless positive possibilities that AI will create for the prepared professional. Society, too, if governments figure out how to thread the needle in a way that protects employees.

As a society, we went from personalized healthcare and education for the wealthy to mass market solutions for the general public. I believe we are now entering an era of personalization for the masses. That is just one trend that will create a lot of opportunities in healthcare.

Here are 4 ways to stay ahead:

1. Make enough money that you can retire early.

2. Become your own boss.

3. Level up your skills to become indispensable.

4. Ride the AI wave and use it to get ahead.

I’m trying to do all 4. My goal with this email list is to help other doctors do so as well.

UPDATE: OpenAI just released their latest model after I wrote the first draft of this email. Its called o1 and it’s already wow-ing experts. It significantly accelerates the timeline of what people thought were possible with AI.

• The o1 model performed on par with smart PhD students in areas like physics, chemistry, and biology, and excelled particularly in maths and coding. It was said that the previous model of GPT performed at the level of a smart high-schooler, a big jump from pre-schooler just 4 years earlier.

• It solved 83% of problems in a math contest, compared to the previous impressive version, which solved just 13%.

• In coding, the model ranked higher than 89% of participants.

• Click the link above to see o1 diagnose KBG syndrome in the Health Science subsection.

Essentially, you can now run your own academic lab or startup right out of your bedroom with access to endless PhDs. I’m definitely using them for both my virtual lab and our startup.

Best,
Mohammed

P.S. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Are there any AI tools that you are using? Are you excited or worried about AI?