A recent JAMA viewpoint reframes the AI debate in medicine: the real disruption isn’t that AI is becoming more human—it’s that medicine has become less human over time.
Despite headlines suggesting AI is surpassing physicians in empathy, the reality is more uncomfortable. Clinicians haven’t been outperformed at the bedside—they’ve been pulled away from it. Over decades, administrative layers—documentation, billing, prior authorization, and EHR work—have gradually displaced physicians from direct patient care, leaving less time for the human elements of medicine. In some settings, physicians now spend nearly twice as much time on desk work as with patients.