By MIKE MAGEE

“As machines become more intelligent and can performance more sophisticated functions, a new relationship between human and automation is dawning. This relationship is moving from master-servant to teammates…” NASA Langley Research Center/2019

“DeepSeek’s Breakthrough Sparks National Pride in China,” screamed the Wall Street Journal headline last week. In the age of Trump’s promise that crippling tariffs would “put China in its place,” the shot across the bow of Silicon Valley’s AI hubris sent Nividia and its allies (and even the reemerging Nuclear power industry whose investors were convinced that AI’s ceaseless thirst for electric power would shift the public’s risk/benefit of nuclear energy in their favor) into the red this past week.

For Nividia, it was a tough way to start the week. As Forbes reported last Monday, “Nvidia lost $589 billion in market capitalization Monday, which is by far the single greatest one-day value wipeout of any company in history…” Of course, it rebounded 8.8% the following day, and by week’s end was near record highs.

As the industry struggles to define just how much of a threat China’s Open-Source cut-rate AI effort is, there is no disagreement on the coming impact of AI on nearly every sector of society, not the least of which is health care. As the NASA report from 2019 suggested, human “master” control of machines is increasingly tenuous, and to succeed we must embrace AI technologic applications as fully enfranchised “teammates.”

Medicine has historically embraced, and even championed their machines, as superhuman extensions of themselves, and featuring them as intricate to “doctoring.” Consider the ubiquitous image of doctor with stethoscope hanging from the neck. It arrived on the scene roughly two centuries ago, in France in 1816. Its creation is attributed to Rene’ Laennec, and was little more than a wooden tube he incorporated as a hearing device after experimented with rolled paper tubes. He likely got the idea after observing the effectiveness of “ear trumpets”, the hearing aid of its time. But it was modesty, according to some historians, that pushed the French doctor to action. He was apparently uncomfortable putting his ear on a woman’s heaving bosom to listen to her heart sounds. The device, an assist, offering better auscultation at the required distance.

Of course, we’ve come a long way since then. But if anything, health care professionals are more reliant than ever on machines. Consider AI-assisted Surgery. Technology, tools, machines and equipment have long been a presence in modern day operating suites. Computers, Metaverse imaging, headlamps, laparoscopes, and operative microscopes are commonplace. But today’s AI-assisted surgical technology has moved aggressively into “decision-support.”

Surgeon Christopher Tignanelli from the University of Minnesota says, “AI will analyze surgeries as they’re being done and potentially provide decision support to surgeons as they’re operating.”