Chelsea Manning: The Dystopia We Signed Up For
I experienced this recently in the scariest of circumstances -- a hospital.<p>I have hemophilia, a bleeding disorder. Normally, its a nuisance that just requires I take medication on semi-daily basis. If I don&#x27;t take the medication, I&#x27;ll usually be fine, except if I have an active bleed, which will just continue to bleed, causing damage to my body, and can be life threatening depending on the location of the bleed.<p>I was recently traveling back home and I ran out of my medication. It&#x27;s a specialty medication that you can&#x27;t find in pharmacies. It normally has to be shipped to me. I had ordered some but it wouldn&#x27;t arrive for another day.<p>I was having an active bleed in my torso, of all places, which is an odd place and distressing because its close to so many important body systems (the spine, major arteries). The thing about my condition is that normally bleeds are innocuous, but you never know. I always be on the safe side, because when I haven&#x27;t its often meant months-long recovery.<p>Anyway, I figured no problem, I&#x27;ll just go to the hospital ER and get some medication, which is what I&#x27;m supposed to do and I&#x27;ve done before -- but not in a long time. Most all major metro hospitals carry my medication.<p>I went to the hospital and told them about my condition and what I needed. They wanted me to take a CT scan, which I declined (I already knew what I was dealing with and just needed my medication). Then, they wanted to test me for hemophilia (I&#x27;ve had the condition since birth), a very expensive and lengthy test that takes hours.<p>After finally speaking with a doctor, he declined to give me my medication until I both consented to the CT scan and the test for hemophilia (despite me having official medical identification that explains my condition). I didn&#x27;t want the CT scan because its ungodly expensive and exposes your body to a lot of radiation (100x an x-ray). You could clearly tell it was a bleed due to swelling, bruising, heat, and my prior medical history. And I&#x27;ve lived with the condition for awhile so I am very attuned to these problems.<p>I experienced what I can only describe as a similar type of hostility as someone coming in seeking drugs to get high (my medication neither makes you high nor is dangerous, except when I don&#x27;t get it).<p>Curious as to why I was being treated this way, I pressed further. The doctor came back with a print-out from some medical &quot;AI&quot; software. It had not only determined what the proper course of action was to be (the tests before my medication), I was also informed that if the staff deviated from the &quot;process&quot; at all, they would risk being fired.<p>There you have it. All decision-making ability had been revoked from even the doctors. They were prepared to let me bleed for hours, while waiting on a test to confirm a condition I&#x27;ve had since birth rather than risk deviating from some computer-generated &quot;AI&quot; policy. Even more sinister, since it was a screenshot (done with print screen) of the windows-based software, I spotted something else: something called a &quot;risk score&quot;. It was a gauge-like visualization that had rated me in the &quot;riskier&quot; category. No doubt this was also the case with patients who are drug seeking, and I hypothesize this was the reason for the apathy and apprehension I detected.<p>It kind of reminds me of the Critical Care episode of Star Trek: Voyager, where patients have been reduced to a &quot;TC&quot; -- treatment coefficient that determines who gets good care and who doesn&#x27;t and is based on the person&#x27;s accomplishments and value to society. Honestly, we&#x27;re not far off from that.<p>What would happen if I came into the ER with a serious problem that required immediate treatment? Would they defer to this software and watch me die while waiting on tests? I know my condition is rare, I&#x27;m used to educating doctors about it, but the fact that the doctors seemed unwilling to even compromise and do the right thing was alarming to me, and also sad. Its like they have become customer service representatives of a large corporation and they know it, and so they have divorced themselves of any care or humanity at all.<p>I decided to leave and take my chances on waiting the day, rather than sit there for hours. At that point, I was in extreme pain and I honestly didn&#x27;t know if the bleed would resolve itself or not. Worse case, I could always come back to the hospital. I guess.<p>The bleed ended up resolving itself, and I eventually got my medication and was able to treat myself. Ironically, a nurse called later the next day to &quot;check up on me&quot;. My tests had finally come back over a day later and confirmed my condition, and also that my factor level was low. After I told her the story I&#x27;ve just shared with you, all she could offer was to &quot;make a note in your chart&quot;. That no-one will be looking at, and likely not influence the medical software at all. I looked on the hospital web site for contact information to try and lodge a complaint -- there was none. I also tried calling the hospital&#x27;s 800 number, which was entirely automated and offered no ability to talk to anyone. In case anyone is wondering, the name of the hospital is Riverside in Columbus, Ohio (part of Ohio Health). It&#x27;s a huge hospital.<p>Anyway, this is my story about AI. Something to think about because as engineers we are the ones making these kinds of software and have an ethical and moral responsibility. We need to be aware of how people are going to use technology and actively work to prevent abuses, and hopefully build this into the software itself.<p>What kind of science fiction novel are we living in?