AI Doesn't Ask Why -- But Physicians And Drug Developers Want To Know

Both physicians and drug developers draw much of their authority from their ability to leverage mechanistic understanding to move from observation to insight. This ability is likely both better and worse than we typically recognize. Our mechanistic understanding is often far less robust than we appreciate, but we bring a sense of intuition and a wealth of tacit knowledge to these domains, enabling us to notice that a patient just doesn’t seem himself, or that a cell culture or chemical reaction is behaving in a curious way. Humble physicians and drug developers will seek ways to embrace (as well as critically verify) the mechanistically unmoored insights offered by ever more sophisticated algorithms. At the same time, engineers seeking to disrupt medicine and pharma would do well to temper their messianic vigor with a healthy appreciation for the lived experience and hard-won-wisdom of many incumbent practitioners.

The full Forbes article can be found at this link.