How Robots Are Changing the Way You See a Doctor

The following feature is excerpted from TIME Artificial Intelligence: The Future of Humankind, available at retailers and at the Time Shop and Amazon. Medicine is both art and science. While any doctor will quickly credit her rigorous medical training in the nuts and bolts of how the human body works, she will just as adamantly school you on how virtually all of the decisions she makes--about how to diagnose disease and how best to treat it--are equally the product of some less tangible measures: her experience from previous patients; her cumulative years of watching and learning from patients, colleagues and the human body. Which is why the idea of introducing machines into medicine seems misguided at the very least, and also foolhardy. How can a robot, no matter how well-trained, take the place of a doctor?