Operating room technology
Trust in the machine
Although AI diagnosis aids have made tangible differences to patient outcomes, recent technological developments in the operating room have focused more on manual dexterity than its mental equivalent. But, as deep learning gets wiser, it’s time to look at the limits and possibilities of our non-human assistants in the operating room. Mae Losasso considers what AI can and can’t do for surgeons with help from Ferdinando Rodriguez y Baena, co-director of the Hamlyn Centre of Robotics at Imperial College London.
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n Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL 9000, the sentient robot manning the mission to Jupiter, starts making some autonomous decisions. HAL’s been programmed to get the spacecraft to Jupiter at all costs – but his makers never stipulated just what these costs might be. So, to save the mission from being jeopardised by humans, HAL switches off the life support machines for the cryogenically sleeping crew; severs one of the astronaut’s lifelines, leaving them to float into deep space; and blocks Dave, the film’s protagonist, from reentering the spacecraft through its pod bay doors. 2001 is an easy (not to mention obvious) go-to in contemporary conversations concerning AI. As
machines keep learning, we keep asking: just how intelligent are they going to get? But when it comes to the question of using AI in medicine – when our lives are literally being placed in the hands of robots – HAL begins to feel less like sci-fi fantasy, and more like a figure we might meet on an operating table in the not-too-distant future.
Ferdinando Rodriguez y Baena, co-director of the Hamlyn Centre of Robotics at Imperial College London, is quick to dismiss such fears. “It is not the world of AI in movies and science fiction,” he explains, “it’s just the next step in human ingenuity, when it comes to solving things using an empirical or iterative approach.” In the year 2021, we’re still a long way off 2001’s vision of AI.
Practical Patient Care /
www.practical-patient-care.com
Kateryna Kon/
Shutterstock.com
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