Is AI going to be as impactful for medicine as the introduction of penicillin?

I am writing to you on the flight back from SAIL, a summit that brings together regulators, academics, public policy experts and computer scientists that took place this year in Puerto Rico. As an aside, every time I attend a more academic-leaning event, I learn more than I do at most other conferences. This particular conference was off the record, so I won’t be able to share any of the content from the specific sessions. But I wanted to share a few themes with you that came up in my discussions without naming any names.

I’ll acknowledge that I’m probably one of the more skeptical voices out there on AI, mostly because I feel like I’ve seen this movie before. But I attended this conference with an open mind, as there are a lot of smart people around the table. The contrarian in me enjoyed getting into some fruitful debates, and hearing from old friends in the industry. A special shout out to Dr. Chris Longhurst who gave me the idea for this headline when he referred to AI as just as impactful as the introduction of penicillin.

So without further ado, here were the more high-level themes that emerged over the few days: