Vibe Surgeon

Doctor and GenAI -- I like to take an extreme example of a doctor and try to imagine different scenarios of docs using GenAI (LLMs) in order to replicate what engineers do or what we expect them to do and all that.

Maybe the stakes are very different, and I do believe that based on sensitivity and cost impact, different AI and analytics models can be valuable. But for a second, let us go back to the doctor in an operating theatre.

So, "vibe coding" -- imagine a Vibe Surgeon. A doc comes into the OT and uploads all reports -- maybe X-rays and a live video feed -- and asks AI to guide the surgery. Starting from which surgery to perform.

Now, say our doc knows just a little bit about tool use and how the human body works, and starts getting into the surgery. Then suddenly, he sees that this particular patient has some complications. This is realized after the initial cut. Then our AI goes into thinking mode, and after 5 minutes, again lists down 5 root causes and maybe 5 more things to look for, etc, etc. And our Surgeon follows it religiously and sees things worsening.

So here is my hypothesis, or one explanation: LLM models are trained on internet data, and they just predict the next word and then the next, and so on and so on. Common structures are bound to get higher probability, and so they will pop up more. One can tune some parameters and make the model more creative, and it will do that by matching words for very, very different domains that may or may not make sense. Meanwhile, here our patient's situation is worsening, and it turns out this is one of those edge cases. And even our GenAI is not able to fully understand the situation.

I don't want to comment on how it ends.

Marvel fan or not -- if you have watched Dr. Strange, then this paragraph may make more sense. Remember how our egotistical Dr. Strange looks at a few cases and says -- A, B, C -- simple or not worth my time or anyone else can do -- and then picks some unique case and he is like, "Yes, this is worth my thing," and all that. We need such experts. And with the way things are going on, these experts are going to be fewer and fewer. Already they are rare species, and 10 years from now? Phew. Just can't imagine.

Lesson or something -- well -- thanks for reading, but I don't have a specific takeaway for you. Just my thoughts, building a persona of a Vibe Surgeon, and I would love to hear from you.