I drove to the pharmacy to pick up a medicine. The pharmacy clerk put it into a bag and said, “You’ll have to step over here for a consult.” I walked around a partition and stood in the consultation booth. A woman in a white “lab coat” – I assumed she was a pharmacist – walked over to me.
“Any questions?” she asked.
“No, I’ve taken this before.”
“Be sure to take this with food,” she warned.
I drove home and unpackaged and examined the medicine bottle. The computer-generated label, which carries essential information and warnings for every medicine the pharmacy sells, stated: “This medicine may be taken with or without food.”
Hmm. Who to believe, the human or the computer that printed the label? A computer named Big Blue defeated the world’s reigning chess champion, Garry Kasparov, at his own game. A computer named Watson was able to handily defeat former Jeopardy champions on a regular basis. Computers have even won the board game Go, arguably more difficult than chess, playing against expert human players.
Sorry, you poor, obsolete, pharmacy humanoid. The machine wins this round, just as it will win all future rounds. I wonder: for how many more years will pharmacies have human workers? I foresee a not-very-distant future where the customer talks to a robot and, when it comes to medications, the robot will be far more knowledgeable than any human could hope to be. I foresee a future where that will happen in a great many occupations.
Run, pharmacy humanoid. The future is coming so you better run.
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