Milena Moser: life has become shorter thanks to artificial intelligence

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Kerry is confused. “Where is the patient?” she keeps asking. She looks around the living room like we hid it under the sofa or maybe behind the bookshelves. It can’t be the jovial man who showed her around his studio and then offered her coffee. Only after Victor shows her his ID and insurance card does she believe him. And then she should sit down first.

“No offense, but you don’t look like you’re going to die anytime soon.”

Die? We exchange glances.

– Eh, no?

Victor was surprised when his otherwise lousy health insurance announced that a nurse would visit him at home. However, Kerry is not here to take his blood pressure or sort out his medication. No, her job is to prepare him for transfer to hospice. However, unlike us, she knows how this misunderstanding arose: “These pathetic robots,” she sighs.

Apparently, health insurance companies have recently left their decisions entirely up to AI. And from more than 20 years of Victor’s medical history, she draws only one conclusion: he will not last long. For the same reason, she continues to refuse his late last eye operation: he will no longer need it anyway. No matter how many times a real, living, breathing, thinking doctor asks for intervention, the algorithm remains the last resort. And he says no.

“After all, robots always communicate with each other, not people,” Kerry explains. “The insurance company says no and the clinic accepts it, even if it happens ten times in a row. It’s crazy.”

“You can say it again.”

However, Kerry admits that she did not suspect suspicion when she was assigned the Victor case. Based solely on his medical history, she also prepared for a seriously ill patient. She wasn’t ready for Victor.

Welcome to the club, I think. This is not the first time we hear the question of where the patient is. His doctors are always amazed at how quickly he recovers from serious diagnoses and how well he feels no matter what. “Does he get up during the day?” his family doctor asked me a few years ago. He didn’t just get up, he set up an entire exhibition. On another occasion, we received a call from a distraught cardiologist who had been alerted by a technician after Victor’s cardiac examination. We were already on our way home when he approached us. There was a tape in front of him, he said, it didn’t look good at all, Victor needed to urgently go to the ambulance. I felt cold, but then I looked at Victor, who was sitting quietly next to me. We also just talked about films, because we also wanted to go to the cinema. Could his life really be in danger? Victor took the phone from my hand. “He doesn’t know me,” he assured me. “He doesn’t know I’m a special case.”

I stick with it.

Kerry finishes his coffee and promises to help us fight the robots. She then takes Victor’s blood pressure “while I’m here”. She measures twice, but the result is the same: “Perfect.”

Source: Blick