Sun daddy: 'Machines will replace 80 per cent of doctors'

[FarCenter]

According to Sun Microsystems cofounder and serial entrepreneur Vinod Khosla, 80 per cent of doctors could be replaced by machines – computing devices backed by imense data sets.

Speaking at the recent Health Innovation Summit in San Francisco, Khosla referred to today's physicians as "voodoo doctors," noting that "Health care is like witchcraft and just based on tradition," according to conference attendee Davis Liu, who discussed Khosla's provocative comments in a blog post.

"Khosla believed that patients would be better off getting diagnosed by a machine than by doctors," Liu wrote, and that the ex-Sunner was of the opinion that creating a comprehensive diagnostic system was a simple problem to solve, and one not requiring doctors to build it.

According to Liu, Khosla said that a machine-learning based healthcare system could be cheaper, more accurate, and more objective than a flesh-and-blood doctor, and could contain enough diagnostic information to put it in the 80ther percentile of doctordom.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/03/vinod_khosla_says_doctors_passe/

[Zalatix]

1. Remember, automation creates jobs.

A ton of low paid machine builders in China, a handful of designers, and a TON of unemployed doctors.

Who reaps most of the benefits from this? The CEOs of the companies making the machines. Everyone else? Cat food!!! Lots and lots of CAT FOOD!

Enjoy!!!

[Comrade_McKenzie]

9. Jobs are no reason to hold technology back.

I welcome a society of less work and more leisure.

[Egalitarian Thug]

10. That's the theory anyway. I have yet to see it in practice. n/t

[Zalatix]

11. Less work means people will starve.

Sorry, but less work means less money. Less money means less ability to pay for the essentials.

That's reality.

[Skidmore]

12. Really think that is going to happen?

The machines we have created to date were supposed to do that and instead we find people practically chained in cubicles and the vaunted "worker productivity" is higher than ever. It is harder to get leisure time and the company has the ability to track practically every minute of your day on and off the job. Sometimes technology creates servitude of a different stripe.

[eShirl]

16. Cat food? Fancy Feast is people!

[MrSlayer]

2. Bacta tanks and droid doctors, coming to a hospital near you.

[thelordofhell]

3. Dr. Lexus

[hunter]

7. Can't wait...

[lunatica]

14. I love that scene!

[Incitatus]

4. So what you type your symptoms into a computer and get whatever drug fits?

Patients have been known to lie.

Someone still has to do physical work. Would nurses do to patients whatever a computer tells them based on what the patient tells the computer? This does not sound like a good idea.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

5. I do that with google now

why do they have to build a new one? lol

[ElboRuum]

6. "Health care is like witchcraft."

You know, I get truly disheartened when otherwise intelligent people make dumbass statements like this.

[Comrade_McKenzie]

8. Sounds good to me. I impatiently await technological singularity. nt

[NYC Liberal]

13. No thanks. I'll stick with an actual person.

When we take the humanity out of medicine and treatment, we'll really be fucked.

I can't begin to describe how stupid this is.

[eShirl]

15. In some (few) cases, there would be an improvement in "bedside manner."