As humans, we can be a curious bunch when it comes to deciding who’s good at their job.
Take medicine.
Most people, over 80%, rank the most important quality in their doctors as trust (fair enough), and the way they build trust is through communication, empathy, and personalized care — ie, bedside manner. How they feel when they interact with their doctor and the system around the doctor.
What’s curiously absent from “most people’s” idea of trust in their doctor is actual patient outcomes. Cold, hard, objective data. Data that would indicate whether a doctor is successful at diagnosis and treatment.
(Note: There is a slight generation gap here. Younger people care more about the of data, and that passes the smell test in our culture.)
What does this tell us about us?
First, it tells us that we care about humans. And we care when other humans make us feel like they care about us. No duh.
Second, it tells us that in situations that involve human interaction, we often are driven by narrative, not numbers. Our experience with our doctor is a story. We tend to trust the story we feel over the truth we can’t see or understand.
In medicine, the magic occurs when a doctor can marry objective, outcome-based competence with an outstanding bedside manner.
And that’s why I’m so bullish on AI doctoring.
Because AI is already proving itself objectively very competent at diagnosis. Much better than humans.
Which means that the human doctor with AI at their side can now focus on building trust through bedside manner.
AI doctoring will make human doctoring even better.
