Collective human effort in future healthcare systems

Stephen Downes’ makes an interesting point here that, while AI-based systems are overtaking individuals with respect to performance on cognitive tasks, they’re going to take a very long time to collectively build complex systems. The example he uses is that algorithms can fly a plane but they’re nowhere near being able to run an airline company. This is useful to consider when we think about AI-based systems in healthcare. We’re focusing our attention on the individual tasks that algorithms are very good at (e.g. image recognition and classification) but we rarely see anything on how they will impact on teams. This is yet more evidence to support the idea that collective action by teams is what will drive successful health systems in the coming decades, rather than high-performing individuals.