Andy

Elon Musk just told the world to stop training surgeons. Not slow down. Stop. Musk: “There’ll probably be more Optimus robots that are great surgeons than there are all surgeons on Earth.” The entire global surgical workforce. Redundant. Before a current med student finishes residency. “Don’t go to medical school?” Musk: “Yes. Pointless.” Twelve years. Half a million dollars. One word. Optimus does not shake. Does not fatigue. Does not flinch at hour eleven of a twelve-hour operation. It improves every night while the surgeon sleeps. By year four, Musk says he’d stake everything on it. By year five, it is not close. Then came the line that rewrites who medicine has ever belonged to. Musk: “Everyone will have access to medical care that is better than what the president receives right now.” Medicine has always been rationed by wealth. The best surgeons on Earth have always belonged to the powerful. That ends. Completely. Within five years. The machine does not calibrate its precision to your net worth. It does not save its best work for the wealthy. Full capacity, every time, for everyone. One day, choosing a human surgeon over a robot will feel like refusing the anesthesia. Human hands are no longer medicine’s highest standard. The ones who doubted this will understand it the day they need surgery, not a surgeon.

Rory Stewart tells me that the Brexit right and far right have been proven “catastrophically wrong” about Brexit, Trump, and immigration. “But their brilliant trick is to say the liberal centre has no judgement.”