We live in the most technologically advanced moment in medical history. We can track our sleep, monitor glucose in real time, sequence genes, and now consult AI at 2am about a symptom that’s bothering us. In this week’s After Hours, Steven and I asked a confronting question: is AI quietly making us less healthy? Not because it is malicious or unintelligent, but because of how we are using it. We’ve moved from “Dr Google” to conversational systems that sound calm, confident and personalised. That shift matters. AI collapses uncertainty into fluent answers. Medicine, however, is built on managing uncertainty carefully and over time.
The human body heals through subtle signals, feedback loops and adaptation. Hormones fluctuate. Inflammation rises and resolves. Symptoms evolve gradually before they declare themselves clearly. A clinician watches patterns, context and change. An AI reads a snapshot of text. It cannot see your posture, hear hesitation in your voice, or weigh risk based on lived experience. Add to that the reality of data cut-offs, shifting guidelines and evolving safety warnings, and you can see the risk: beautifully written advice that may be incomplete, out of date or missing nuance. Confidence is not the same as correctness.
That said, this is not an anti-AI argument. AI works exceptionally well in structured roles: summarising patient notes, spotting trends in glucose or sleep data, translating medical jargon into plain English, and supporting triage in overstretched systems. Used properly, it can improve health literacy and reduce administrative burden. My concern is when it begins replacing skill development or judgment. If AI reads every ECG or suggests every diagnosis, junior clinicians lose repetition, and repetition is how intuition is built. Technology should extend expertise, not erode its foundation.
So here is the balance. Use AI to understand concepts, to generate better questions, to feel more prepared before you see your doctor. But do not outsource diagnosis, interpretation or decision-making to a machine that does not know you and is not accountable for you. AI is excellent at producing answers. Health, however, is about timing, context, restraint and relationship. Use the technology. Just don’t let it replace the thinking.
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