* * * * *
                                        
                                Who serves whom?
                                        
> The narrative around these bots is that [AI (Artificial Intelligence)s] are
> there to help humans. In this story, the hospital buys a radiology bot that
> offers a second opinion to the human radiologist. If they disagree, the
> human radiologist takes another look. In this tale, AI is a way for
> hospitals to make fewer mistakes by spending more money. An AI assisted
> radiologist is less productive (because they re-run some x-rays to resolve
> disagreements with the bot) but more accurate.
> 
> In automation theory jargon, this radiologist is a "centaur" – a human head
> grafted onto the tireless, ever-vigilant body of a robot
> 
> Of course, no one who invests in an AI company expects this to happen.
> Instead, they want reverse-centaurs: a human who acts as an assistant to a
> robot. The real pitch to hospital is, "Fire all but one of your
> radiologists and then put that poor bastard to work reviewing the judgments
> our robot makes at machine scale."
> 

“Pluralistic: AI can't do your job (18 Mar 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links
from Cory Doctorow [1]”

This has always been my fear of the recent push of LLM (Large Language
Models) backed AI—not that they would help me do my job better, but that I
existed to help it do its job better (if I'm even there).

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/18/asbestos-in-the-walls/#government-by-spicy-autocomplete

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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