BBC 6 minute English-A future without doctors

Transcript of the podcast

Note: This is not a word-for-word transcript

.Neil: Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I’m Neil

.Sam: And I’m Sam

?Neil: Are you feeling well, Sam? No headache or sore throat

?Sam: No, I feel fine thanks, Neil. Why do you ask

Neil: Well, I’ve been reading some inspirational stories about the doctors and nurses fighting Covid. When I was a boy, I always dreamed of becoming a doctor

?Sam: Ah, I see. Have you ever been in hospital

Neil: Yes, I have, and I remember the nurse’s bedside manner – you know, the kind and caring way that doctors and nurses treat people who are ill

Sam: Nowadays more and more of the jobs that humans do are being carried out by machines. But I doubt that a doctor’s bedside manner could easily be replaced by a robot

Neil: In this programme, we’ll be discussing whether the revolution in artificial intelligence, often shortened to ‘AI’, could replace human doctors and nurses. We’ll be asking: can you imagine a future without doctors

Sam: In fact, machines are already doing some of the jobs traditionally done by doctors – scanning people’s bodies to detect skin cancer, for example

Neil: Yes, that’s true, Sam, and it links to my quiz question which is about human skin. It’s a well-known fact that skin is the human body’s largest organ – but how much skin does the average adult have? Is it
?,a) 2 square metres
,b) 3 square metres? or
?c) 4 square metres

Sam: Of course our skin gets loose as we age but I can’t believe there’s 3 square metres of it! I’ll say the answer is a) 2 square metres

Neil: OK, we’ll find out if that’s correct later. Every year in the UK over 5 million people are treated for skin cancer. Catch it early and your chances of survival are increased

Sam: Usually a skin specialist, or dermatologist, will examine your skin using a handheld microscope. But in 2017, a team of researchers at Stanford Medical School made an exciting announcement

Neil: Here’s Oxford University researcher Daniel Susskind, telling BBC World Service programme, The Big Idea, what the medics at Stanford had invented

Daniel Susskind

A team of researchers at Stamford last year announced the development of a system that, if you give it a photo of a freckle it can tell you as accurately as twenty-one leading dermatologists whether or not that freckle is cancerous

Sam: The Stanford medical team had invented an AI system to analyse freckles – small brown spots found on people’s skin, especially on pale skin

Neil: As it turned out the AI programme was better than human doctors at telling whether a freckle was harmless or cancerous – connected to some type of cancer

Sam: So, it seems that artificial intelligence is already replacing humans when it comes to detecting cancer – and doing a better job of it

Neil: But Daniel Susskind isn’t convinced. One reason is that AI systems still need humans to programme them – and as it turns out, knowing exactly how doctors detect illness remains something of a mystery

:Sam: Here’s Daniel Susskind again in conversation with BBC World Service programme, The Big Idea

Daniel Susskind

If you ask a doctor how it is they make a diagnosis, they might be able to point you to particularly revealing parts of a reference book or give you a few rules of thumb, but ultimately they’d struggle… they’d say again it requires things like creativity and judgment, and these things are very difficult to articulate – and so traditionally it’s been thought very hard to automate – if a human being can’t explain how they do these special things, where on earth do we begin in writing instructions for a machine to follow

Neil: Most doctors find it difficult to explain how they make a diagnosis – their judgement about what someone’s particular sickness is, made by examining them

Sam: Diagnosing someone’s illness is complicated but there are some rules of thumb. A rule of thumb is a practical but approximate way of doing something

.Neil: For example, when cooking, a good rule of thumb is two portions of water to one portion of rice

Sam: Exactly. And because identifying sickness is so difficult, Daniel says “where on earth do we begin writing instructions for a machine?” We use phrases like where, how or what on earth to show feelings like anger, surprise or disbelief

?’Neil: I might show surprise by asking Sam, ‘how on earth did you know the answer to that

Sam: Ha ha! I guess you’re talking about your quiz question, Neil? And you needn’t be so surprised – I’m naturally brainy

Neil: Of course you are. In my quiz question I asked Sam how much skin there is on an adult human body

.Sam: And I said it was a) 2 square metres

Neil: Which was… the correct answer! With your brains I think you’d make a good doctor, Sam, and I’m sure you’d have a good bedside manner too

Sam: You mean, the kind and caring way that doctors and nurses treat their patients. OK, let’s recap the rest of the vocabulary, starting with freckle – a small brown spot on someone’s skin

.Neil: Freckles are usually harmless, but some skin spots can be cancerous – connected to cancer

.Sam: A doctor’s diagnosis is their judgement about what someone’s particular sickness or disease is

.Neil: A rule of thumb is a useful but approximate way of doing or measuring something

Sam: And finally, we use phrases like where on earth..? as a way to show emotions like anger, surprise or disbelief

Neil: That’s all for this programme but join us for the next edition of 6 Minute English when we’ll discuss another trending topic and the related vocabulary

!Sam: Why on earth would you miss it? Goodbye for now

!Neil: Goodbye