Should You Still Go to Medical School? A Doctor’s Warning About AI & the Future of Medicine

In 2024, I recorded one of the most controversial episodes of The Trillium Show: “Smart Kids — Don’t Go to Medical School.” Two years later, I’m revisiting it because the questions I raised then feel even more relevant now. Medicine is changing fast. Physicians have less autonomy. Hospital systems and insurance companies have more control over how care is delivered. And AI is getting increasingly good at the very things much of modern medicine depends on: pattern recognition, data analysis, diagnosis and following treatment protocols. So what happens when an AI can analyze data from your Apple Watch, smart scale, lab results and symptoms, generate a differential diagnosis and recommend the next step? And if large healthcare systems can use AI alongside PAs, nurse practitioners and other providers, how many physicians will they actually need? In this episode, I break down the three reasons I originally told smart college students to think twice before going to medical school: The loss of physician autonomy and private practice The growing reliance on protocols and algorithms instead of independent clinical judgment The possibility that AI dramatically changes the demand for certain physicians I still love medicine. I still love being a surgeon. But if one of my own children told me they wanted to go to medical school today, these are the conversations we would have. Maybe I’ll look back in another 10 years and realize I was completely wrong. I hope I do. But two years later, I’m not convinced that I was. If you’re considering medical school, raising a future doctor, or wondering where healthcare and AI are headed, this is a conversation worth having. Would you recommend medical school to an 18-year-old today? Let me know in the comments.