Will Artificial Intelligence Replace the Doctor—or Set the Doctor Free?
At a meeting of the Association of Yale Alumni in Medicine on October 3, 2026, doctor Richard Low, MD, questioned a common idea about artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare: writing down everything doctors say is not the same as understanding how they think and make medical decisions.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is quickly becoming part of healthcare. But there is an important difference between writing down what doctors say and understanding what they know, how they think, and how they reach decisions.
This difference was the main topic of a talk given on October 3, 2026, by Richard Low, MD. He is a doctor who develops medical software and graduated from Yale School of Medicine in 1976. He gave the talk during an alumni weekend organized by the Association of Yale Alumni in Medicine.
The talk was called “Will AI Replace the Doctor—or Set the Doctor Free?” It questioned an idea behind much of today's medical AI: that if a computer correctly writes down everything said during a medical visit, it also understands what the doctor knows about the patient.
A written record can include every word spoken during a medical visit but still miss why the doctor made a particular medical decision. Doctors use years of experience, what they know about each patient, and information that may never be said out loud.
Dr. Low believes the future of medical AI should not be about making computers act like doctors. Instead, it should be about helping doctors do a better job of caring for their patients.
He says much of today's medical technology has accidentally changed the way doctors work with their tools. Technology should fit the way doctors think. But instead, doctors have increasingly had to change how they work to meet the demands of technology. Dr. Low believes generative AI, a type of AI that can create text and other content, offers a chance to change this and make technology work better for doctors.
The talk also looks at how these questions connect to medical education, doctors' freedom to make professional decisions, and the growing amount of paperwork and other office tasks doctors must handle. These extra duties have helped make doctors unhappy with their work and have contributed to burnout, which happens when people become deeply exhausted by ongoing work stress.
Dr. Low shares ideas based on his experience both as a doctor treating patients and as someone who develops medical technology. This gives him a view of the issue from both patient care and medical software development.
Richard Low, MD, graduated from Yale School of Medicine in 1976. He worked as a doctor in California for about 20 years, including serving as a leader of three emergency departments. Later, he started Praxis EMR, a medical software company. He has spent decades studying how computers can help doctors think through medical problems and make decisions, rather than getting in their way.
The full talk is available for doctors, medical teachers, students, and anyone else who wants to watch it at https://www.praxisemr.com/richard-low-yale-ai.html.