A couple weeks ago, I went to the doctor to go over some test results. All was well — spectacularly average, even. But there was one part of the appointment that did take me by surprise. After my doctor gave me advice based on my health and age, she turned her computer monitor towards me and presented me with a colorful dashboard filled with numbers and percentages.

At first, I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking at. My doctor explained that she entered my information into a database with millions of other patients, just like me — and that database used AI to predict my most likely outcomes. So there it was: a snapshot of my potential health problems.

Usually I’m skeptical when it comes to AI. Most Americans are. But if our doctors trust these large language models, does that mean we should too?

Dr. Eric Topol thinks the answer is a resounding yes. He’s a physician scientist at Scripps Research who founded the Scripps Research Translational Institute, and he believes that AI has the potential to bridge the gap between doctors and their patients.

“There’s been tremendous erosion of this patient-doctor relationship,” he told Explain It to Me, Vox’s weekly call-in podcast.

The problem is that so much of a doctor’s day is taken up by administrative tasks. Physicians function as part-time data clerks, Topol says, “doing all the records and ordering of tests and prescriptions and preauthorizations that each doctor........

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