Is AI making doctors lazy? Study reveals overreliance may be undermining their critical skills

AI in healthcare: As artificial intelligence becomes more common in hospitals and clinics, a new concern is emerging that doctors may be losing critical skills the more they rely on these tools.

How AI Is Changing Medical Practice

A recent study published in The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology suggests that AI, while helpful in the moment, might be quietly reshaping how doctors perform and not always in good ways. The research focused on endoscopists performing colonoscopies and found that their ability to detect abnormalities dropped after losing access to AI assistance, as per a report. Cleveland Clinic has described that colonoscopy is an examination of the inside of your large intestine (colon).

Dr. Marcin Romańczyk, a gastroenterologist at H-T Medical Center in Tychy, Poland, led the study and what he found was unexpected from him, according to a Fortune report.


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Study Reveals Significant Drop in Abnormality Detection Without AI Support

The study observed 1,443 patients who underwent colonoscopies with and without the help of AI tools. While using the AI system, which highlighted possible polyps with a green box on the screen, doctors detected abnormalities at a rate of 28.4%, as per Fortune. But when the same doctors later performed procedures without the AI, their detection rate fell to 22.4%, which is a 20% decrease in detection rates, according to the report.

Why Relying on AI May Be Dulling Doctors’ Diagnostic Abilities

Romańczyk and his team did not collect data on why this happened as they hadn’t anticipated the decline. But he has a theory.

He believes that the doctors became too accustomed to relying on the green box. Without it, the specialists no longer knew exactly where to pay attention. He compared it to how people navigate with GPS today, a shift he calls the “Google Maps effect,” he means that drivers have transitioned from the era of paper maps to that of GPS and most people rely on automation to show the most efficient route, when 20 years ago, one had to find out that route for themselves, as reported by Fortune.

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Romańczyk explained that, “We were taught medicine from books and from our mentors. We were observing them. They were telling us what to do,” adding, “And now there’s some artificial object suggesting what we should do, where we should look, and actually we don’t know how to behave in that particular case,” as quoted in the report.

The findings not only highlight the potential laziness developing as a result of an overreliance on AI, but also the changing relationship between medical practitioners and a longstanding tradition of analog training, as reported by Fortune.

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AI’s Impact on Critical Thinking

His study contributes to this growing research of questioning humans’ ability to use AI without compromising their own skillset, according to the report.

While AI is increasingly been used in hospitals and doctors' offices, it's also rapidly reshaping workspaces with the hopes of enhancing performance, as per Fortune. Last year, Goldman Sachs had forcasted that the technology could increase productivity by 25%, reported Fortune.

However, the emerging researches have also warned of the challenges of adopting AI tools, like the study from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University earlier this year found that among surveyed knowledge workers, AI increased work efficiency, but reduced critical engagement with content, reducing judgment skills, as reported by Fortune.

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Experts Say Preserve Human Judgment Alongside AI

Romańczyk doesn’t suggest avoiding the presence of AI in medicine, pointing out that, “AI will be, or is, part of our life, whether we like it or not,” adding, “We are not trying to say that AI is bad and [to stop using] it. Rather, we are saying we should all try to investigate what’s happening inside our brains, how we are affected by it? How can we actually effectively use it?” as quoted in the report.

Even Lynn Wu, associate professor of operations, information, and decisions at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, emphasised that, "We have to maintain those critical skills, such that when AI is not working, we know how to take over,” as quoted by Fortune.

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FAQs

Is AI helping or hurting doctors?

AI helps improve efficiency and accuracy, but overreliance may reduce doctors' own decision-making skills.

What is the “Google Maps effect”?

It’s when people become so dependent on tools like GPS (or AI) that they lose their own navigation or thinking skills.