JAMA essay argues against mandatory doctor approval for AI decisions as GPT-4 outperforms doctors
HealthcareLdr · x · 2026-08-28
An opinion piece in the medical journal JAMA suggests regulators should avoid requiring human approval for every AI decision in healthcare. Cited tests show GPT-4 alone scored 92% on diagnostic reasoning, while doctors using the same model scored only 76%.
Key points from the article:
- Against mandatory human oversight: The authors argue that autonomous AI will eventually outperform any doctor-AI pairing in medical reasoning and oppose legally mandating a human in the loop.
- Conflict of interest: Co-author Neal Khosla is CEO of AI telemedicine company Curai Health; his father, Vinod Khosla, is an investor in both OpenAI and Curai, suggesting a potential bias.
- Medical community pushback: Physician groups like the American Medical Association maintain that AI should support, not replace, doctors, labeling AI-only care as the "economy class" of medicine.
- Supporting research: The authors cite studies since 2024 indicating AI matches or beats doctors in the five core reasoning tasks: history taking, diagnosis, test selection, guideline-based treatment, and chronic disease management.
Related event: JAMA Opinion Arguing Autonomous AI May Beat Doctors Sparks Backlash(3 posts)→
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