If you find out what happened, let me know, because I think it’s happening to me too.

I had a professor in college that said when an AI problem is solved, it is no longer AI.

Computers do all sorts of things today that 30 years ago were the stuff of science fiction. Back then many of those things were considered to be in the realm of AI. Now they’re just tools we use without thinking about them.

I’m sitting here using gesture typing on my phone to enter these words. The computer is analyzing my motions and predicting what words I want to type based on a statistical likelihood of what comes next from the group of possible words that my gesture could be. This would have been the realm of AI once, but now it’s just the keyboard app on my phone.

Many, many years ago, the hospital where I work had a medical transcription company to transcribe dictated radiology results.

At the time, users would access the server via DEC terminals or a terminal application on their computer.

One radiologist set up a script in the terminal application to sign off all his reports with one click. Another radiologist liked it so the first let the second copy it.

Later, the second radiologist opened a ticket with IT because all his reports were being signed by the first radiologist. Yeah, because he didn’t update the script to change the username and password being used to sign the reports.

That’s an amusing anecdote, but the terror comes from the fact that NEITHER RADIOLOGIST WAS READING THEIR REPORTS. BEFORE SIGNING THEM.

The reason they are supposed to sign the report is to confirm that they reviewed the work of the transcriptionist and verified that the report was correct.

No matter what the tool is, doctors will assume the results are correct and sign off on them without checking.