Will artificial intelligence revolutionize medicine or amplify its deepest problems?

The American Medical Association (AMA) recently released its first policy recommendations for augmented intelligence. It highlights some of the most serious challenges in artificial intelligence, including the need for transparency, bias avoidance, reproducibility, and privacy. Those working in medicine may find this list familiar. Medicine has long struggled with similar problems. The similarities are not a coincidence. There are deep philosophical and methodological intersections across AI and clinical medicine. Both professions recently experienced a pendulum swing in their prevailing approaches. And in the zeitgeist of big data, powerful interests in medicine and AI are presently aligned on the same side of a centuries-long ideological struggle. People are understandably excited about a digital convergence in health tech. But ideological alignment and entrenchment may reinforce these shared challenges in a perverse codependency. The philosophical intersections between AI and medicine are not well known within their respective communities, let alone across them. Yet a positive and productive collaboration may unfold. AI and medicine embody important differences that could elevate each side and catalyze innovation.