The computer interrupted while Pamela was still speaking. I had accompanied her – my dear friend – to a recent doctor’s appointment. She is in her 70s, lives alone while navigating multiple chronic health issues, and has been getting short of breath climbing the front stairs to her apartment. In the exam room, she spoke slowly and self-consciously, the way people often do when they are trying to describe their bodies and anxieties to strangers. Midway through her description of how she had been feeling, the doctor clicked his mouse and a block of text began to bloom across the computer monitor.
The clinic had adopted an artificial-intelligence scribe, and it was transcribing and summarizing the conversation in real time. It was also highlighting keywords, suggesting diagnostic possibilities and providing billing codes. The doctor, apparently satisfied that his computer had captured an adequate description of Pamela’s chief complaint and symptoms, turned away from us and began reviewing the text on the screen as Pamela kept speaking.
When the appointment was over, as a physician myself and anthropologist interested in the evolving culture of medicine, I asked if I could glance at the AI-generated note. The summary was surprisingly fluid and accurate. But it did not capture the catch in Pamela’s voice when she mentioned the stairs, the flicker of fear when she implied that she now avoided them and avoided going out, the unspoken connection to Pamela’s traumatic relation to her own mother’s death that the doctor never elicited.
