[Photo by Lee Jung-soo]
It's only been two months since a medical system using artificial intelligence was introduced for the first time in South Korea. But AI doctors are getting more popular than human doctors, threatening their job.
In December last year, a cancer clinic at the Gacheon University Gil Medical Center in the western port of Incheon adopted US company IBM's Watson, a cognitive AI system which is capable of processing massive data in a few seconds.
Ironically, doctors at the hospital feel embarrassed at Watson's growing popularity as cancer patients trust its diagnoses more than human doctors'.
According to South Korean broadcaster JTBC, Watson's AI doctor has diagnosed about 100 cases, satisfying most patients. In four cases that showed conflicting diagnoses between Watson and human doctors, the patients chose to follow Watson's suggestion.
"We've decided to follow Watson's prescriptions and take anticancer treatment," a caregiver of a cancer patient was quoted as saying. Human doctors have opposed anticancer drugs, citing their side effects.
This is an isolated incident, but doctors started to voice concern about their job security as more South Korean hospitals plan to adopt AI's precise and fast diagnosis.
Watson diagnoses a patient after he or she consults with a human specialist doctor, matching and comparing pre-recorded data such as previous medical records to massive medical data including 12 million pages of medical journals and thousands of textbooks in seconds.
"It's right to use AI as an assistant, not as a real doctor," said Kim Joo-han, a medical professor at Seoul National University. "AI technology would get better in the future. However, it won't be able to perfectly replace human doctors in providing medical services."
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
