As learning language models (LLMs) continue to advance, so do questions about how they can benefit society in areas such as the medical field. A recent study from the University of Cambridge's School of Clinical Medicine found that OpenAI's GPT-4 performed nearly as well in an ophthalmology assessment as experts in the field, the Financial Times first reported. In the study, published in PLOS Digital Health, researchers tested the LLM, its predecessor GPT-3.5, Google's PaLM 2 and Meta's LLaMA with 87 multiple choice questions. Five expert ophthalmologists, three trainee ophthalmologists and two unspecialized junior doctors received the same mock exam. The questions came from a textbook for trialing trainees on everything from light sensitivity to lesions.

Oversight is rightly recognised as vital within high-stakes public sector AI applications, where decisions can have profound individual and collective impacts. Much current thinking regarding forms of oversight mechanisms for AI within the public sector revolves around the idea of human decision makers being 'in-the-loop' and thus being able to intervene to prevent errors and potential harm. However, in a number of high-stakes public sector contexts, operational oversight of decisions is made by expert teams rather than individuals. The ways in which deployed AI systems can be integrated into these existing operational team oversight processes has yet to attract much attention. We address this gap by exploring the impacts of AI upon pre-existing oversight of clinical decision-making through institutional analysis. We find that existing oversight is nested within professional training requirements and relies heavily upon explanation and questioning to elicit vital information. Professional bodies and liability mechanisms also act as additional levers of oversight. These dimensions of oversight are impacted, and potentially reconfigured, by AI systems. We therefore suggest a broader lens of 'team-in-the-loop' to conceptualise the system-level analysis required for adoption of AI within high-stakes public sector deployment.

Medical students are losing the dexterity to stitch up their patients because they are spending too much time in front of screens. That's the claim from one professor of surgery who says trainee doctors are "less competent", compared to their older colleagues, at using their hands. Professor Roger Kneebone, from Imperial College London, says young people have so little experience of craft skills that they struggle with practical tasks. It's a worrying thought - but how true is it? Does screen time impact dexterity?