I don't know if this is a common experience, but the first time I really needed a doctor, they spent the whole time typing on a laptop. Since that didn't result in any follow up questions or anything beyond a referral to a specialist, I suspect it was all about getting paid by the insurance company. There's a blindingly obvious fix to that part of overworked doctors.

I know a couple of doctors and they both told me the same thing (this is likely dependent on exactly where you are): the amount of time they can spend with any given patient is less than 15 minutes. In practice, they have to "rob peter to pay paul" and try to minimize the amount of time they spend with patients who have lesser medical needs so they can spend more time with patients who have more complicated situations.

Some of it is justifying for insurance. But some of it is so there’s a record to refer to later when you come back.

(Doctors will, for example, still tend to type plenty during an appointment in, say, the English NHS.)

OK, AI could be used transparently to fill out forms and write down what the doctor talks to into a microphone, assist in the health staff with some tasks in the form of interchangeable tools. What we don't need is another layer of blackbox magic making everything even more murky.

"But a whole lot of that loss of the human element isn't about AI one way or another. It's about doctors being ridiculously overworked."

My suspicion just now is that while there is a long term pattern of neglect and overwork, we are being nudged towards AI medicine in order to avoid paying out wages. (I think a similar thing will happen in law enforcement, where facial recognition networks and machines will be used in future in place of human police in many cases.)