AI Doctors Set Me Free
Since experiencing what AI doctors can do, I have felt a great weight lifted. A water-front pavilion gets the moonlight first; I may be among the first people in China to see what AI doctors can do. I must admit I am quite a lazy person. Now, with AI doctors, I can solve many problems I could not solve before, with no need to toil away in tedious study. I can free up my energy for deep research in specialized fields — a great deal of creative research is something AI cannot replace. AI can liberate humanity from heavy routine work, giving us more time for creative research.
From ancient times to the present, most human inventions have aimed to lighten our burden. If an invention were meant to add burden, it would be eliminated sooner or later. Many people fear the disruptive impact AI will bring, but personally I see it also as an opportunity. The arrival of AI is also pushing humanity to be freed from a great deal of boring, repetitive, monotonous, rote memorization — so that people can do more creative and more interesting work.
Zhuangzi said, "My life has a limit, but knowledge has none; pursuing the limitless with the limited is perilous." Not taking a shortcut when there is one, and instead battering oneself against a stone wall, is foolish. Knowledge itself is only a tool, meant to be applied; as long as it can be applied, there is no need to cram one's brain as full as possible — after all, both life and brain capacity are finite. I plan to lower my exam-prep goals, freeing time and energy to study AI doctors properly and learn to use them to boost my work efficiency. As long as one has a medical foundation and uses AI doctors skillfully, one gains an extraordinarily powerful think tank, extending one's brain and being able to consult with AI specialists in every department at any time.
From September until now, I have had three colds. The latest was especially severe and miserable. Such frequent colds have never happened to me before. I still want to live vigorous, not dragging my head down and listless; when ill, one has no good mood. The reason for these frequent colds is my own overwork. After experiencing AI doctors, I realized that no matter how hard we human beings work, in foundational, repetitive and computational work our abilities cannot match AI; AI's power in these areas is far beyond us. We should use AI as a sharp tool in hand, not treat it as a monster.
Readers ask me: now that AI doctors have arrived, how should one choose a specialty in medical school? My personal view is still to follow your own interests. Choosing a career you dislike and doing it for a lifetime is the most painful thing in the world. No one can predict what changes AI will bring, and I do not have that ability either. More important than foreseeing is building one's adaptability. Adjusting your direction at any time according to technological development is the survival strategy we should have in this era of constant progress.
I have lived for over forty years; for as long as I can remember, the world has been constantly changing. The social upheaval our generation has lived through is unprecedented — and later generations may never experience its like. We went from an agrarian age of living off the land that had lasted tens of thousands of years (or longer) to today's AI age in a mere thirty-four years. Thirty or forty years ago, those of us born in the late 70s and early 80s were still inheriting the clan-based, farming life that had continued unbroken since the Han and Tang dynasties. A shared childhood memory of many is transplanting rice, harvesting rice, cutting pig fodder, collecting pig manure, and washing up and falling asleep by kerosene lamps. It was hard then to imagine that today we would fly across the country or the world by plane or high-speed rail, and write by tapping a keyboard.
Over these thirty or forty years, I have also watched field mice evolve from big "rats" down to thumb-sized little mice — their living environment has changed utterly, and only the smaller ones survived. When one reaches the mountain, there must be a path; I believe we humans, in the new crises of our era, will also evolve more survivable traits. Reversal is the movement of the Dao; things reach an extreme and turn back. Every crisis holds an opportunity; society always lurches forward, swinging between balance, imbalance and rebalance.
Our ancestors were ancient apes weighing hundreds of jin, who over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution became modern humans. In the new environment, I believe we will evolve traits better suited to survival. At the very least, Earth has already seen five mass extinctions; a sixth would not be surprising. If extinction comes, it comes; living in nature, following nature's laws from birth to extinction — what is so terrible about that?
A person does not live a hundred years, so why cherish a thousand years of sorrow? The times are changing; let us just change along with them.