Newsweek Discovers Centralized AI is a Mistake, But Not Centralized Power
Newsweek's recent op-ed warns against centralizing healthcare with AI, arguing that it could lead to 'catastrophic errors' and 'threaten human autonomy.' A noble sentiment, one might think, if their concern for 'human autonomy' extended beyond hypothetical AI to the very real, very current erosion of patient autonomy via exorbitant deductibles, denied claims, and the corporate capture of medical
decisions. They fret about future AI making mistakes, yet ignore the current system's demonstrable 'errors' like the 68,000 Americans who die annually due to lack of health insurance, according to a 2009 American Journal of Public Health study. These aren't AI glitches; these are feature, not bug. We're told that AI 'may lead to the loss of irreplaceable data' (oh, the horror) while the media
conveniently glosses over how millions lose access to their entire medical history every time a hospital merges, shutters, or gets bought out by a private equity firm. The article, and much of mainstream discourse, frames AI as the great disruptor, rather than the newest tool for an already deeply flawed, profit-driven system. Perhaps the real 'mistake' isn't AI centralization, but the pretense
that a system built on maximizing corporate revenue could ever truly prioritize patient well-being, with or without a fancy algorithm.