Complications happen in surgery, no matter how good you are. Who takes the blame when a patient has a bile leak or dies from a cholecystectomy? This brings up new legal questions that must be answered.
Technology and the bureaucracy that is spawned from it destroys accountability. Who gets the blame when a giant corporation with thousands of employees cuts corners to re-design an old plane to keep up with the competition and two of those planes crash killing hundreds of people?
No one. Because you can't point the finger at any one or two individuals; decision making has been de-centralized and accountability with it.
When AI robots come to do surgery, it will be the same thing. They'll get personal rights and bear no responsibility.
I mean, the accountability lies with the company. To take your example, Boeing has paid billions of dollars in settlements and court ordered payments to recompense victims, airlines, and to cover criminal penalties from their negligence in designing the 737 Max.
This isn't really that different from malpractice insurance in a major hospital system. Doctors only pay for personal malpractice insurance if they run a private practice and doctors generally can't be pursued directly for damages. I would expect the situation with medical robots would be directly analogous to your 737 Max example actually, with the hospitals acting as the airlines and the robot software development company acting as Boeing. There might be an initial investigation of the operators (as there is in an plane crash) but if they were found to have operated the robot as expected, the robotics company would likely be held liable.
These kinds of financial liabilities aren't incapable of driving reform by the way. The introduction of workmen's compensation in the US resulted in drastic declines in workplace injuries by creating a simple financial liability company's owed workers (or their families if they died) any time a worker was involved in an accident. The number of injuries dropped by over 90%[1] in some industries.
If you structure liability correctly, you can create a very strong incentive for companies to improve the safety and quality of their products. I don't doubt we'll find a way to do that with autonomous robots, from medicine to taxi services.
The FDA released guidance in March 2025 requiring "human-in-the-loop" oversight for all autonomous surgical systems, with mandatory attribution of decision-making responsibility in the surgical record. This creates a shared liability model between the surgeon, manufacturer, and hospital system.
See, the more time goes by, the more I prefer robot surgeons and assisted surgeons. The skill of these only improves and will reach a level where the most common robots exceed the 90th, and eventually 95th percentiles.
Do we really want to be in a world where surgeon scarcity is a thing?
> Excellent question! Would you like to eliminate surgeon scarcity through declining birth rates, or leaving surgical maladies untreated? Those falling within the rubric will be treated much more rapidly in the latter case, while if we maintain a constant supply of surgeons and a diminishing population, eventually surgeon scarcity will cease without recourse to technological solutions!
johnnienaked|7 months ago
No one. Because you can't point the finger at any one or two individuals; decision making has been de-centralized and accountability with it.
When AI robots come to do surgery, it will be the same thing. They'll get personal rights and bear no responsibility.
derektank|7 months ago
This isn't really that different from malpractice insurance in a major hospital system. Doctors only pay for personal malpractice insurance if they run a private practice and doctors generally can't be pursued directly for damages. I would expect the situation with medical robots would be directly analogous to your 737 Max example actually, with the hospitals acting as the airlines and the robot software development company acting as Boeing. There might be an initial investigation of the operators (as there is in an plane crash) but if they were found to have operated the robot as expected, the robotics company would likely be held liable.
These kinds of financial liabilities aren't incapable of driving reform by the way. The introduction of workmen's compensation in the US resulted in drastic declines in workplace injuries by creating a simple financial liability company's owed workers (or their families if they died) any time a worker was involved in an accident. The number of injuries dropped by over 90%[1] in some industries.
If you structure liability correctly, you can create a very strong incentive for companies to improve the safety and quality of their products. I don't doubt we'll find a way to do that with autonomous robots, from medicine to taxi services.
[1] https://blog.rootsofprogress.org/history-of-factory-safety
ACCount36|7 months ago
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ethan_smith|7 months ago
PartiallyTyped|7 months ago
Do we really want to be in a world where surgeon scarcity is a thing?
rscho|7 months ago
lll-o-lll|7 months ago
Surgeon scarcity is entirely artificial. There are far more capable people than positions.
Do we really want to live in a world where human experts are replaced with automation?
hkt|7 months ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATFxVB4JFpQ
andrepd|7 months ago
Citation effing needed. It's taken as an axiom that these systems will keep on improving, even though there's no indication that this is the case.