Physicians Freaking Out Over Control

I’ve never knowingly used artificial intelligence in my personal or professional life. I’ve never asked a personal voice assistant to answer my question. I’ve never asked AI to write something for me. I like doing things myself and being 100% responsible for the results. That’s how I learn.

It’s machine learning but for humans.

That’s why I resent big consumer technology and services companies shoving AI in my face. I can’t look up something online, write a commentary, edit a report, schedule routine car service, or buy something online without an AI assistant, editing software, chatbot or digital prompt telling me how to do something, asking me if I meant something else or unilaterally correcting me.

I don’t like it. I have to fight my way through a jungle of circuits, chips and wires to get to the other side, do what I want to do myself, and take ownership of the outcome. The greatest novels in history were written by hand, while I just want to write a 500-word blog post. I think I can manage that without the help of Gemini or ChatGPT.

A new study on physician burnout published in the Annals of Internal Medicine sparked the above rant. The study looked at the link between control over work and burnout. Six researchers affiliated with the American Medical Association (AMA), University of Wisconsin, University of California at San Francisco and Stanford University conducted the study. The AMA, which has made physician burnout an industry cause célèbres, funded the study.

The study is based on a survey of 2,339 doctors working at 19 different hospitals, including five academic medical centers. The researchers asked the physicians whether they had “adequate control” over six key workplace variables. They defined “adequate control” as satisfactory, good or optimal. The six workplace variables were:

• Volume of their patient load
• Who is on their clinical team
• Influence over hiring of staff
• Setting their clinical schedules
• Overall workload
• Authority/autonomy over the work for which they’re responsible

Doctors cited that they had the most adequate control over their clinical schedules (74.6%). They also cited that they had the least adequate control over hiring staff (49%).

The researcher then connected those results to feelings of burnout, and not surprisingly, the physicians who reported poor control over those workplace variables had higher levels of burnout.

That said, the finding that caught my eye was the one on authority/autonomy and responsibility. Fewer than six in 10 physicians — 58.3% — said they had sufficient authority or autonomy over the work for which they’re responsible. Flipping it, more than four in 10 said they don’t have sufficient authority or autonomy over the work for which they’re responsible.

Being accountable for an outcome you have little or no control over stinks. Just ask anyone who’s ever worked anywhere in any capacity.

That’s what big consumer tech and services companies are doing to me personally and professionally. I’m responsible for the outcome, but AI wants to control or be accountable for the process so it can collect more data on me for its corporate overlords.

As a patient, the study’s finding freaks me out even more. Someone who literally can be holding my life in their hands has little or no control over the outcome. They just happen to be there doing something because AI told them to be there and do it. I don’t like it.

Where’s the off switch?