Title: AI Tools May Degrade Doctors' SkillsAI in healthcare skills
Content: How reliance on AI in healthcare could weaken clinical instincts
What happens when doctors begin to forget how to trust their own eyes? A study in The Lancet has raised an uncomfortable question for the future of medicine: do AI tools, designed to support doctors, risk dulling their most critical skills?
A new study found doctors became less able to detect abnormalities after using AI-assisted colonoscopy tools. The risk is not the technology itself, but the erosion of skills when AI is not always available. Overreliance on AI mirrors challenges in other fields, such as declining spatial memory from GPS use.
When support becomes dependency
The study tracked doctors’ ability to spot abnormalities before and after three months of using an AI tool during colonoscopies. The results were telling: once doctors became accustomed to AI support, their performance without it declined. This was not a case of technology failing, but of human skills softening.
In the short term, this creates an awkward mismatch. A clinician trained with AI in one hospital may underperform when moving to another without such tools. In the long term, as adoption spreads, such skill erosion could lead to over-dependence on systems that are not yet universally reliable.
Echoes beyond healthcare
This is not the first time reliance on machines has dimmed human ability. Psychologists have warned that overuse of GPS navigation can reduce spatial awareness, and calculators long ago reshaped our mental arithmetic skills. The parallel is clear: technologies that relieve cognitive strain can also hollow out the very expertise they were meant to complement.
Medicine, however, is different from finding a café in Bangkok or working out your restaurant bill. The stakes are life and death. A missed diagnosis, even if statistically less likely with AI, can carry profound consequences if the doctor’s own skills are no longer sharp.
The balance to strike
AI in medicine is not going away, nor should it. Early trials show AI can boost detection rates, accelerate diagnosis, and ease workloads in overstretched health systems. The real challenge is managing the balance between augmentation and atrophy.
Hospitals and training bodies across Asia are beginning to grapple with this question. Singapore’s National University Health System, for instance, has paired AI radiology tools with additional training requirements to ensure doctors still hone their diagnostic instincts. This aligns with Singapore's broader goal for its workforce to be AI bilinguals, as discussed in Singapore MSMEs Are Getting An AI Power-Up!. In India, start-ups building AI for ophthalmology have explicitly positioned their tools as second opinions rather than replacements. India's ethics boards are also focusing on responsible AI integration, as seen in the news about AI chatbots exploit children, parents claim ignored warnings. For instance, some of the tools being developed could be used to enhance health services, much like how Anthropic unveils healthcare AI tools days after OpenAI recently announced.
This may prove to be the model: design AI as a co-pilot, not a chauffeur. Doctors remain the ultimate decision-makers, but with an intelligent assistant offering a nudge, a reminder, or a double-check. Such positioning reinforces trust in the technology while preserving human judgement.
Rethinking the role of expertise
There is a deeper cultural question here. If young doctors grow up in an era of ubiquitous AI, what counts as medical expertise? Is it the ability to spot patterns on an image, or the skill to ask the right questions and apply context to a machine’s output? In practice, it may be both — but the profession must define it before the tools define it for them.
Asia, with its mix of advanced hospitals and resource-constrained rural care, may face this tension more acutely than the West. Where AI is available, it must be integrated responsibly. Where it is not, doctors must still be equipped to operate at full human capacity. Striking that balance will be central to how the region harnesses AI in healthcare without eroding the very expertise that patients rely on. For more insights into regional AI trends, see A–Z Asia 2026: The ABCs of Asia's Ai-Infused Future. This discussion also touches on the broader implications of AI, similar to concerns raised about AI chatbots exploit children, parents claim ignored warnings.
The road ahead
The Lancet study is an early warning rather than a condemnation. AI is not weakening doctors — overreliance is. As with calculators, GPS, and countless other tools, society will adapt. But adaptation requires intent: training systems, medical policies, and even the design of AI tools themselves must ensure that human skill remains sharp, even as machines lend their support.
The question for Asia’s healthcare leaders is not whether to adopt AI, but how to do so without forgetting the craft that undergoes medicine itself. Will the doctors of tomorrow be expert diagnosticians, or expert interpreters of algorithms? The answer will shape the trust patients place in them. A comprehensive discussion on the ethical implications of AI in medicine can be found in a report by the World Health Organization on artificial intelligence in health^ [https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/artificial-intelligence-in-health].
Latest Comments (4)
This Lancet piece really hits home. I've seen it firsthand, not with doctors directly, but with mechanical engineers back in my hometown, Pune. When CAD software became commonplace, some of the younger chaps, brilliant as they were, started losing that intuitive feel for structural integrity. They'd rely purely on simulations, sometimes missing the practical nuances an experienced hand would instantly spot. It makes you wonder, doesn't it? If doctors lean too heavily on AI diagnostics, will they lose that 'clinical eye,' that ability to connect seemingly disparate symptoms that a machine might overlook? It's a proper balancing act, this.
This is quite a pertinent point raised. While AI promises efficiencies, I wonder if the bigger concern isn't just skills degradation, but also doctors losing that intuitive "gut feeling" or contextual understanding that comes from years of direct patient interaction and problem solving. How do we keep that human element sharp?
It's a valid worry, this idea of AI making doctors *tamad* or less sharp. But honestly, for us here in the Philippines, wouldn't these tools actually *elevate* skills for many? Think about doctors in rural areas, often working with limited resources and facing a huge patient load. AI could be a godsend, a second opinion when there isn't another human specialist for miles. Instead of degradation, it could mean *upskilling*, pushing our general practitioners to tackle more complex cases with greater confidence, rather than just relying on guesswork or referring out. We shouldn't just focus on the 'loss' but also the potential for widespread improvement.
Interesting read. I wonder if this 'degradation' of skills might be more pronounced in areas where medical training is already less robust, creating a larger gap between human baseline and AI output. Are we talking about a *universal* erosion or a disproportionate impact?
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