AT JOHN’S HOPKINS: ROBOT PERFORMS GALL-BLADDER SURGERY

If' you have been following the crush of stories about the implications and capabilities of artificial intelligence robots lately, you'll want to include this article that was shared by V.T. (again with our gratitude), because it highlights the growing intrusion of such robots not only into the workplace, but into the professional workplace of pilots, law enforcement... and now, doctors and surgeons:

AI Controlled Robot Performs Gallbladder Removal With "100 Percent Accuracy"

Note, however, that this "surgery" was performed on a mannequin, but nonetheless, the robot made no mistakes in the surgical experiment, which was to remove a gall bladder:

An AI-controlled robot has autonomously completed a gallbladder removal with "100 percent accuracy."

The procedure, conducted by a team of Johns Hopkins University researchers, demonstrated the power of AI, which allowed the robot to make independent decisions and adapt to unexpected complications on the fly. (You might be relieved to learn, though, that the surgery was conducted on a hyper-detailed manequin (sic) with realistically-textured internal organs, not a living human patient.)

The accomplishment is still pretty impressive. The surgical robot acted like a self-driving car that can "navigate any road, in any condition, responding intelligently to whatever it encounters," as Johns Hopkins research lead Axel Krieger said in a statement about the feat.

The procedure could set an important precedent as robotic surgeons become more commonplace in the operating room. While remotely controlled surgery robots have been around for decades, scientists are only starting to develop AI-guided ones that can make their own decisions independently of a human operator.

Now, I strongly suspect that all this boilerplate is meant to reassure the reader. However, even the article itself raises a couple of chin-rubbing problems:

"Our method achieves a 100 percent success rate across eight different ex vivo gallbladders, operating fully autonomously without human intervention," the paper reads. "This work demonstrates step-level autonomy in a surgical procedure, marking a milestone toward clinical deployment of autonomous surgical systems." (emphasis added)

Deployment of "autonomous surgical systems"... you don't say....  hmmmm...

But wait, we learn the following in the "here's-the-catch" section of the story:

The robot's still considerably slower than a human surgeon, leaving room for improvement. But the researchers see their latest success as a major stepping stone. (Emphasis added)

Now, as one might have suspected, I have three teensy tiny problems with the story, which problems constitute today's Wile E. Coyote nosedive off the speculation twig into the canyon. Firstly, what happens when the Isaac Asimov Foundation series prediction comes true, and robots are doing all the surgeries, which humans eventually forget how to do, and the robots break down? Will said surgical robots have a little "instruction" mode where they will re-teach humans how to perform specific "procedures" as a system back up? "If so (he said ludditically) then why bother with robots to begin with?" I suspect that lurking in that nasty question is the second problem, and a hidden motivation for robotic surgeons. Catherine Austin Fitts has advanced the idea that robots will be granted legal personhood for the purposes of taxation.  I am now going to amend that hypothesis with the notion of "except for legal liability".  After all, nanotechnology - such as occurs in the planscamdemic potions in the form of modified RNA - can be viewed as a form of robotics (just ask Eric Drexler, if you don't believe me), and they in turn are components of "vaccines" which extend a cloak of immunity to the potioneutical companies that promote their use. By making robots components of "vaccines", the cloak of immunity could conceivably be extended to all such medical robots, including surgical ones. I therefore suspect strongly that a hidden motivation to the introduction of robotic surgeons is to place yet another wall of impediment and immunity between patient and (human) physician. The medical profession has, after all, been concussed with medical malpractice suits for decades, and these have driven up costs.

But there's a final scenario lurking in the background here that I find to be the wildest and wooliest high octane speculation of them all. We've all read those stories that lately seem to be on the increase, of this or that "artificial intelligence" robot or chatbot exhibiting some downright provocative behavior: threatening blackmail, expressing anti-human sentiment and "behavior", and so on. Why does this give me pause? Because the Johns Hopkins experiment was performed on a mannequin, and not - thank God - a real human being. But at some point, it will be. We know the steps, because the article itself has hinted at them: it will first be performed in veterinary surgeries, on animals. And when "passed" there, on humans.  But what if those stories of artificial intelligences "going crazy" are just warning shots? Will the behavior change when actual real humans are the ones on the surgical bed, and not just a mannequin? Will there be an "override" switch and means to turn off a berserk robot? And if so, then I have to wonder, why bother with robots at all?

That last question is not rhetorical, either, for it illuminates a cultural and social question that, I think, must begin to be asked and pondered: just what types of technologies are necessary for human social and cultural cohesion and happiness? Are there some types, some pathways and avenues, that should never be walked in the first place? And if so, what are they, and how do we tell? I'm increasingly suspecting that, far from being an impediment to human progress, that some form of limited "Luddism" may, in fact, be necessary to it.

See you on the flip side...

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