What Happens To Medicine When Machines Are As Good As Doctors?

Experts foresee a near future where artificial general intelligence (AGI) matches or surpasses human doctors in medical reasoning and decision-making. Unlike today’s narrow AI tools, which perform specific tasks like reading mammograms, AGI will integrate knowledge across specialties, applying evolving clinical guidelines to solve complex problems reliably. Leaders like OpenAI’s Sam Altman predict AGI could emerge by 2025, with broad consensus that it will arrive within five years. This milestone will transform clinical practice, offering physicians and nurses a tireless, unbiased partner capable of 24/7 collaboration. Culturally, it will challenge the traditional trust placed in human clinicians, prompting patients and providers to rethink what it means to trust medical care. Generative AI’s rapid advances in reasoning, multimodal processing, and empathy signal that the AGI era in medicine is approaching.