It is 11 AM. The office of the Professor of Medicine. The loud whirrrr of an espresso machine breaks the silence. The Professor is tamping coffee grounds with precision.

Arjun: Sir, I’m quitting. I am done.

Professor: Quitting? You are a final-year resident. You are three months away from freedom. Sit down. Take this.

Arjun: (Taking the cup with trembling hands) Thank you. But Sir, look at the news. That tech giant released the clinical diagnostic plugin yesterday. It’s over. They say it passed the USMLE with higher scores than 99% of humans. It diagnosed a rare autoimmune condition in seconds; a case three specialists missed for years. Just a few seconds. Why am I memorizing the CHA2DS2-VASc score? Why am I calculating Child-Pugh or Well’s at 3 AM? Why am I learning physical signs that a camera can see better? I am obsolete. The therapeutic plugin will come soon too.

Professor: Drink the coffee. It is a dark roast. Arabica with a 20% Robusta for extra caffeine kick. Very stimulating.

Arjun: You aren’t listening, Sir! In two years, it won’t just be software. We will have humanoids. Hyper-realistic robots. They will have warm skin. They will make perfect eye contact. They will hold a patient’s hand. They will scan retinas and listen to hearts without a stethoscope. They will know every drug interaction in history. They won’t get tired. They won’t complain about the canteen food. They went complain about each other too! Who will hire me?

Professor: (Sipping slowly, enjoying the coffee) No hospital administrator will hire you. That is certain.

Arjun: Exactly! So I should leave. I’ll go into… I don’t know. Agriculture?

Professor: Robots will do that too. And they won’t complain about the weather. Listen to me, Arjun. You are panicking. You are thinking just like a machine thinks… you are calculating. Let us look at the stakeholders. Who benefits from this?

Arjun: The patients win. Rural patients finally access world-class diagnostics. Insurance companies win because robots don’t order “just to be on the safer side” MRIs.

Professor: Correct. Insurance companies will love this. They will pay only for the “Standard AI Protocol” because it is programmable and cheap. They will refuse to pay for the involvement of a human doctor unless it is absolutely justified. The pharma giants? They will feed data directly to the programmed bots.

Arjun: And the doctors?

Professor: The average doctor is finished. The “fast-food” physician. The one who sees a symptom, checks a chart, and writes in a slip. The robot can do it better. The robot does not get irritable after a 24-hour shift. If your value is just your memory, you are useless.

Arjun: That’s what I’m saying, Sir! That is 90% of medicine!

Professor: It is 90% of the business of medicine. It is 0% of the art of medicine.

Arjun: Art? Sir, with due respect, “art” does not pay for my future home loan EMI.

Professor: Let us talk about your assumption. Imagine you are the patient. You have a terminal illness. The robot comes in. It holds your hand. Its silicone skin is heated to exactly 37 degrees Celsius. Its voice is perfectly modulated to sound empathetic based on analysis of thousands of grief counselling sessions. It tells you that you have three months to live. It cites the Kaplan-Meier survival curves. It offers you a pill to reduce anxiety.

Arjun: Okay.

Professor: Do you feel comforted?

Arjun: Maybe… If it’s convincing enough.

Professor: No. You know and feel that it is simulated. Deep down, you know the machine does not care. It acts like it cares. But there is no soul witnessing your pain. It is just processing some data points labelled “grief.” It is just a “sattvic mode” running on a silicon chip.

Arjun: Does that matter? If the behaviour is identical?

Professor: It matters entirely. Humans crave for connection… we do not just crave for solutions. We want to be seen. A robot sees your data… it does not see you.

Arjun: But for a simple fever…

Professor: For a fever, use that bot. I will use the bot too! Why should I waste my brain on a viral fever? I have so many things to do. Let the AI handle the monotony. That is the “tamas” of medicine… the repetitive, dull work. Let the machines take it.

Arjun: So what is left for us?

Professor: The complex. The messy. The grey areas. The spiritual.

Arjun: Spiritual? I thought we were scientists.

Professor: Medicine was never about fixing a machine. It was about healing a life. Sometimes, the correct evidence-based treatment is not what the patient needs. A robot follows the rule. “Prescribe statins.” A human doctor sees the patient is depressed, recently widowed, and won’t take the tablet anyway. The human doctor says, “Forget the statins for now. Go for a walk every day. Let’s talk again in three months.” The robot cannot break the rules… it can only optimize them.

Arjun: But the AI will learn that too, Sir. It will learn psychological patterns.

Professor: It can learn the pattern. It cannot feel the weight of the decision. Look, the future is split.

On one side: McDonald’s Medicine. Cheap, fast, AI-driven. Perfect for 80% of cases.

On the other side: Boutique Medicine. The “True Physician.” This doctor uses AI as a tool, just like they use a stethoscope. But the patient pays for the human. They pay for the judgment. They pay for someone who can look them in the eye and say, “I will not let you suffer,” and mean it.

Arjun: So I have to be… a super-doctor?

Professor: You have to be a philosopher-doctor. You must understand the nature of suffering, not just the pathology of disease. You must study the Gita as much as you study Guyton. You must understand fear, hope, and karma.

Arjun: That sounds harder than memorizing drug doses.

Professor: It is much harder. That is why the robots cannot do it. The “knowledge era” is dead, Arjun. The AI has already won that game. We are entering the “wisdom era.”

Arjun: Wisdom.

Professor: Yes. The ability to know when to ignore the data. The ability to touch a patient and transfer confidence, not just analyze temperature. If you want to be a technician, quit now. The robot is much better. But if you want to be a healer? Stay.

Arjun: (Staring into his dark coffee) The robot can’t enjoy this coffee, right Sir?

Professor: It can analyze the chemical composition perfectly. It can tell you the exact pH. But it will never know the joy of the first sip. That is your edge. Never forget it. Now, finish the coffee. Let’s go for rounds.

Arjun: Rounds? But Sir, the AI…

Professor: The AI is a tool. You are the operator. Let’s go check if the machine missed anything. Let’s hold some hands.

Arjun: (A faint smile returns) Yes, Sir.

Professor: And Arjun?

Arjun: Sir?

Professor: If you ever try to build a website for your private practice, use WordPress. Do not let the AI convince you to build one from scratch.

Arjun: Noted, Sir.

Shashikiran Umakanth

Dr. Shashikiran Umakanth (MBBS, MD, FRCP Edin.) is the Professor & Head of Internal Medicine at Dr. TMA Pai Hospital, Udupi, under the Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE). While he has contributed to nearly 100 scientific publications in the academic world, he writes on MEDiscuss out of a passion to simplify complex medical science for public awareness.