Jason Wei: AI won't automate radiologists — elastic demand beats displacement
_jasonwei · x · 2026-10-20
Jason Wei pushes back on predictions that AI will automate radiology, a field Geoff Hinton said in 2016 to stop training people for — yet demand for radiologists is at an all-time high.
- Jagged edge of intelligence: radiology is extremely multi-task (hundreds of conditions on X-rays alone, thousands with CT/MRI). AI will master common cases first and serve as a triage tool; full automation would take 3-5 years at best, bottlenecked by rare-disease data.
- Elastic demand (Jevons paradox): near-zero interpretation cost means physicians order more scans — radiologists might read only 20% of inbound scans while volume grows 5x. Developing countries with under one radiologist per million people add demand.
- Long term: cheap interpretation incentivizes cheaper scanners, growing the pie. The principles apply to any field with elastic demand and quality that scales with intelligence.
Related event: Hinton's radiologist prediction fails, sparking AI forecasting humility(4 posts)→
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