you could not pay me enough to have my surgery done by a robot
this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2025
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yeah, it's much better to have a towel left inside of you by a real human.
If it were the only option, I'd gladly take it.
I rely on robots to do a lot of other things in my life, directly and indirectly.
Well, not many directly. But machines, definitely.
So... Judging by recent trends in AI, this will be used to devalue the labor of surgeons and be provided as the only option available to people who are not rich. People will die from what would get a human charged with neglegent homicide but, it will be covered up and, when it comes to light just how dangerous it is, nothing will happen because all of the regulatory agencies have been dismantled.
OR maybe everyone — including the poor — will eventually have access to robotic surgeons with the equivalent of like 500 human years of experience, but with the latest surgical best practices that have only existed in recent years. The experience gained by a single surgery could be shared across all of them.
We're talking about surgery. If some technology can provide significantly more valuable labor than its human counterpart (which, in this case, could mean more lives saved), then it might actually be worth exploring.
I would rather get surgery done by a robot than not get it done at all. I'm not gonna be picky about "devaluing surgeons" if my life is on the line, but if that's the hill you wanna die on then good on ya, mate.
Not fair. A robot can watch videos and perform surgery but when I do it I'm called a "monster" and "quack".
But seriously, this robot surgeon still needs a surgeon to chaperone so what's being gained or saved? It's just surgery with extra steps. This has the same execution as RoboTaxis (which also have a human onboard for emergencies) and those things are rightly being called a nightmare. What separates this from that?
Human flaw. A surgeon doesnt require steady hands. So if they were in any way damaged they could still continue being a surgeon.
It can't sneeze
without human help
...
responded to and learned from voice commands from the team
🤨🤔
You underestimate the demands on a surgeon’s body to perform surgery. This makes it much less prone to tiredness, mistakes, or even if the surgeon is physically incapable in any way of continuing life saving surgery
They should have specified "without physical human help."
I have seen enough ER to know that operating theatre staff work as a team. So I consider this would be a good thing.
Good, now add jailtime for the ceo if something goes wrong, then we'll have a very safe tech.
Just like how we jail every surgeon that does something wrong
know what? let's just skip the middleman and have the CEO undergo the same operation. you know like the taser company that tasers their employees.
can't have trust in a product unless you use the product.
TASER uses their products on their employees? Lol that's wild
you don't know the half of it.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/axon-taser-exposures/
Shawn Gorman, a lawyer who worked at Axon until 2019, said the company had a high-pressure culture of loyalty, unlike anything he has seen in nearly two decades of practice.
“It was truly toxic,” he said.
this is an employee and her mother getting tased at one of these events.
I understand what you are saying is intended as „if they trust their product they should use it themselves“ and I agree with that
I do think that undergoing an operation that a person doesnt need isnt ethical however
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And then you‘re lying on the table. Unfortunately, your case is a little different than the standard surgery. Good luck.
At some point in a not very distant future, you will probably be better off with the robot/AI. As it will have wider knowledge of how to handle fringe cases than a human surgeon.
We are not there yet, but maybe in 10 years or maybe 20?
Or the most common cases can be automated while the more nuanced surgeries will take the actual doctors.
I'd bet on at least twenty years before it's in general use, since this is a radical change and it makes sense to be cautious about new technology in medicine. Initial clinical trials for some common, simple surgeries within ten years, though.
This is one of those cases where an algorithm carefully trained on only relevant data can have value. It isn't the same as feeding an LLM the unfiltered Internet and then expecting it to learn only from the non-crazy parts.
This is one of those cases where an algorithm carefully trained on only relevant data can have value.
Hopefully more people learn that this is the important part.
It becomes nonsense when you just feed it everything and the kitchen sink. A well trained model works.
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The main issue with any computer is that they can't adapt to new situations. We can infer and work through new problems. The more variables the more "new" problems. The problem with biology is there isn't really any hard set rules, there are almost always exceptions. The amount of functional memory and computing power is ridiculous for a computer. Driving works mostly because there are straightforward rules.
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realistic surgery
lifelike patient
I wonder how doctors could compare this simulation to a real surgery. I’m willing to bet it’s “realistic and lifelike” in the way a 4D movie is.
Biological creatures don’t follow perfect patterns you have all sorts of unexpected things happen. I was just reading an article about someone whose entire organs are mirrored from the average person.
Nothing about humans is “standard”.
I wonder how doctors could compare this simulation to a real surgery. I’m willing to bet it’s “realistic and lifelike” in the way a 4D movie is.
I think "lifelike" in this context means a dead human. The robot was originally trained on pigs.
The article mentions that previously they used pig cadavers with dyes and specially marked tissues to guide the robot. While it doesn't specify exactly what the "lifelike patient" is, to me the article reads like they're still using a pig cadaver just without those aids.
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This was a new word for me, so I had to look it up: It's an... interesting choice of words to describe the success of a robot.
Of course a robot would perform the job unflappably, it is emotionless by design. I'm pretty sure it would go right ahead and murder the patient unflappably as well. The robot "keeping its cool" is not even a question.
That said, this does sound very impressive, even if I think there's some pretty crazy risks involved. Hopefully they have more respect for the problem then self-driving car companies.
so this helps with costs right? right? 🥺🤔🤨
It helps the capitalists' profit margins 😊😊😊
I know, I'm over here trying to light little fires LoL JK but yeah for sure never see reduced costs
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I want that thing where a light "paints" over wounds and they heal.
Oh good it’s voice controlled. Because that technology works amazingly all the time.
"OMG it was supposed to take out my LEFT kidney! I'm gonna die!!!!!!"
"Oops, the surgeon in the training video took out a Right kidney. Uhh... sorry."
So are we fully abandoning reason based robots?
Is the future gonna just be things that guess but just keep getting better at guessing?
I’m disappointed in the future.
reason based robots
What's that?
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so theoretically they could make sex bots and train them on.... so they perform 'unflappably'!
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thank you for removing my gallbladder robot, but i had a brain tumor
Okay but why? No thank you.
It does until it doesn't
Really hope they tried it on a grape first at least.
Naturally as this kind of thing moves into use on actual people it will be used on the wealthiest and most connected among us in equal measure to us lowly plebs right.....right?
Are you kidding!? It'll be rolled out to poor people first! (gotta iron out the last of the bugs somehow)
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