The NYT article Your A.I. Radiologist Will Not Be With You Soon reports, “Leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic and other companies in Silicon Valley now predict that A.I. will eclipse humans in most cognitive tasks within a few years… The predicted extinction of radiologists provides a telling case study. So far, A.I. is proving to be a powerful medical tool to increase efficiency and magnify human abilities, rather than take anyone's job.”[1]
I disagree that this is a “telling case study.”[2] Radiology has several attributes which make it hard to generalize to other jobs:
1. Patients are legally prohibited from using AI to replace human radiologists.[3]
2. Medical providers are legally prohibited from billing for AI radiologists.[4]
3. Malpractice insurance does not cover AI radiology.[5]
Moreover, the article is framed as Geoff Hinton having confidently predicted that AI would replace radiologists and this prediction as having been proven wrong, but his statement felt more to me like an offhand remark/hope.
Takeaways from this incident I endorse:[6]
1. Offhand remarks from ML researchers aren’t reliable economic forecasts
2. People trying to predict the effects of automation/AI capabilities should consider that employees often perform valuable services which [...]

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Outline:

(02:42) Appendix: Data and Methodology for the sample of AI Radiology products

(02:50) Data

(03:10) Methodology

The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
December 16th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xE2HzcHWPFS9EsJqN/radiology-automation-does-not-generalize-to-other-jobs

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“Radiology Automation Does Not Generalize to Other Jobs” by Xodarap

LessWrong (30+ Karma)