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Experimental surgery performed by AI-driven surgical robot

arstechnica.com

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Re: Experimental surgery performed by AI-driven surgical robot

#91

Post by pixl97 »

lll-o-lll wrote: post #60
Calavar wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think this myself in the past, but my opinion has shifted over time. If a surgeon needs to do X number of cases to become independently competent in a certain type of surgery and we want to graduate Y surgeons per year, then we need at least X * Y patients who require that kind of surgery every year. At a certain point increasing Y requires you to decrease X and that's going to cut into surgeon quality. Ove…

To summarise your view, more surgeons means not enough experience in a given surgery to maintain base levels of skill. I think this is wrong; you would need a significant increase, and the issue I was responding to was “shortage”. There’s no prospect of shortages when the pipeline has many more capable people than positions. Here in Australia, a quota system is used, which granted, can forecast wrong (we have a defic…

> I’d much rather see the robot as a “tool” that a surgeon employs on those occasions, rather than some replacement for an expert.

I mean we already have this in the sense of teleoperated robots.

Re: Experimental surgery performed by AI-driven surgical robot

#92

Post by derektank »

johnnienaked wrote: post #18
flowmerchant wrote: post #11

Complications happen in surgery, no matter how good you are. Who takes the blame when a patient has a bile leak or dies from a cholecystectomy? This brings up new legal questions that must be answered.

Technology and the bureaucracy that is spawned from it destroys accountability. Who gets the blame when a giant corporation with thousands of employees cuts corners to re-design an old plane to keep up with the competition and two of those planes crash killing hundreds of people? No one. Because you can't point the finger at any one or two individuals; decision making has been de-centralized and accountability with i…

I mean, the accountability lies with the company. To take your example, Boeing has paid billions of dollars in settlements and court ordered payments to recompense victims, airlines, and to cover criminal penalties from their negligence in designing the 737 Max.

This isn't really that different from malpractice insurance in a major hospital system. Doctors only pay for personal malpractice insurance if they run a private practice and doctors generally can't be pursued directly for damages. I would expect the situation with medical robots would be directly analogous to your 737 Max example actually, with the hospitals acting as the airlines and the robot software development company acting as Boeing. There might be an initial investigation of the operators (as there is in an plane crash) but if they were found to have operated the robot as expected, the robotics company would likely be held liable.

These kinds of financial liabilities aren't incapable of driving reform by the way. The introduction of workmen's compensation in the US resulted in drastic declines in workplace injuries by creating a simple financial liability company's owed workers (or their families if they died) any time a worker was involved in an accident. The number of injuries dropped by over 90%[1] in some industries.

If you structure liability correctly, you can create a very strong incentive for companies to improve the safety and quality of their products. I don't doubt we'll find a way to do that with autonomous robots, from medicine to taxi services.

[1] https://blog.rootsofprogress.org/history-of-factory-safety

Re: Experimental surgery performed by AI-driven surgical robot

#93

Post by kaonwarb »

lll-o-lll wrote: post #38
kaonwarb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most technological capabilities improve relatively monotonically, albeit at highly varying paces. I believe it's a reasonable position to take as the default condition, and burden of proof to the contrary lies on the challenger.

You are implying linear improvement, which is patently false. The curve bends over.

Linear? Not at all; generally increasing over time, but hardly consistently.

Re: Experimental surgery performed by AI-driven surgical robot

#94

Post by cpard »

qgin wrote: post #88
cpard wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Waymo is a little bit different and driving in general. Because you have an activity that most people don’t trust how other people perform it already. It’s easier to accept the robo driver. For the medical world, I’d look to the Invisalign example as a more realistic path on how automation will become part of it. The human will still be there the scale of operations per doctor will go up and prices will go do…

LASIK is essentially an automated surgery and 1-2 million people get it done every year. Nobody even seems to care that it’s an almost entirely automated process.

Makes total sense, I think robotic surgeries are happening for quite a while now not only for eye surgeries.

And I think it’s another great example of how automation is happening in the medical practice.

Re: Experimental surgery performed by AI-driven surgical robot

#95

Post by SoftTalker »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #50
rscho wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it depends on your definition of 'surgery'. One could well imagine that transplanting your conscience into a new body might well be feasible before we get to live on Mars.

I am not remotely convinced that "transplanting consciousness" is a thing that is even possible At best we may eventually be able to copy a consciousness, but that isn't the same thing

That would make an interesting story plot. Suppose we've developed the ability to copy a consciousness. It has all your memories, all your feelings, your same sense of "self" or identity. If you die, you experience death, but the copy of your consciousness lives on, as a perfect replacement. Would that be immortality?

Re: Experimental surgery performed by AI-driven surgical robot

#96

Post by BriggyDwiggs42 »

rscho wrote: post #31
bluefirebrand wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not a bold assumption? Unless we can somehow bio engineer our bodies to heal without needing any external intervention, we're going to need surgery for healthcare purposes

Well, it depends on your definition of 'surgery'. One could well imagine that transplanting your conscience into a new body might well be feasible before we get to live on Mars.

I don’t want to be too confident on something like this, but I feel like consciousness comes somehow from the material body (and surrounding world) in all its complexity, so transplanting consciousness absent transplant of physical material wouldn’t be possible in theory. This assumes it’s a consequence of the structure of things and not something separate, but I think that’s a reasonable guess.

Re: Experimental surgery performed by AI-driven surgical robot

#97

Post by aydyn »

myhf wrote: post #42
copperx wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, if there's overwhelming superiority, why not? But a lot of surgeries are special corner cases. How do you train for those?

I don't care whether human surgeons or robotic surgeons are better at what they do. I just want more money to go to whoever owns the equipment, and less to go to people in my community. It's called capitalism, sweaty

based

Re: Experimental surgery performed by AI-driven surgical robot

#98

Post by keiferski »

refactor_master wrote: post #59
tremon wrote: post #40

> Indeed, the patient was alive before we started this procedure, but now he appears unresponsive. This suggests something happened between then and now. Let me check my logs to see what went wrong. > Yes, I removed the patient's liver without permission. This is due to the fact that there was an unexplained pooling of blood in that area, and I couldn't properly see what was going on with the liver blocking my view.…

> Is there anything else you’d like me to do?

> Would you like me to prep a surgical plan for the next procedure? I can also write a complaint email to the hospital's ethics board and export it to a PDF.

Re: Experimental surgery performed by AI-driven surgical robot

#99

Post by hkt »

qgin wrote: post #88
cpard wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Waymo is a little bit different and driving in general. Because you have an activity that most people don’t trust how other people perform it already. It’s easier to accept the robo driver. For the medical world, I’d look to the Invisalign example as a more realistic path on how automation will become part of it. The human will still be there the scale of operations per doctor will go up and prices will go do…

LASIK is essentially an automated surgery and 1-2 million people get it done every year. Nobody even seems to care that it’s an almost entirely automated process.

If they can automate training me not to recoil from the eye speculum I'd appreciate it, my pesky body does not like things getting too close.

(Serious remark)

Re: Experimental surgery performed by AI-driven surgical robot

#100

Post by iExploder »

qgin wrote: post #88
cpard wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Waymo is a little bit different and driving in general. Because you have an activity that most people don’t trust how other people perform it already. It’s easier to accept the robo driver. For the medical world, I’d look to the Invisalign example as a more realistic path on how automation will become part of it. The human will still be there the scale of operations per doctor will go up and prices will go do…

LASIK is essentially an automated surgery and 1-2 million people get it done every year. Nobody even seems to care that it’s an almost entirely automated process.

Not a doctor or an expert on this but as a patient I would say LASIK sounds less invasive than internal organ operations...
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