Automation of the Professions

More predictions of the automation of the professions here.

the professions, particularly medicine, but also law, are particularly well-suited for automation precisely because they’re the products of intelligence and reason carefully applied to the solution of problems. It’s their very ‘if this then that’ approach that lends itself so well to automation. The better a profession can explain why it does something, the more easily much of its work can be automated. 

About a decade or so ago, I recall some physicians who treated cancer being surprised when a expert in decision-making studied their practices and concluded that everything they were doing was the result of the answers to some combination among 150 questions. If A, B, and C were true, then the doctors would start treatment X. If A, B, and D were true, then it’d be treatment Y instead.

Another reason, of course, why the professions are prime candidates for automation, is that the labour is so expensive.