Shahar Madjar, MD, Journal columnist

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the third and almost last chapter in a series about artificial intelligence and its future role in medicine. This chapter begins with a fictional story and ends with two thought-provoking questions for you to consider.

At a dinner party with her friends, Judith introduced her new boyfriend, Rob. Her friends loved Rob. “He is so cute,” they told her, “smart, and funny. Just adorable. You are so lucky.” One of them, a big smile on her face, also said: “I can’t believe there are still available men like this, is he for real?”

The year was 2051 and Judith knew that the answer to this last question, whether Rob was real or not, was a resounding “No.” Rob wasn’t real, he was a robot.

She named him Rob, short for Robert, but also for Robot. He was the latest in a line of human-like robotic marvels. He arrived at her home, holding his own manual. The opening line in the manual read: “BoyFriend v6.09 is The First and Only Robot Completely and Utterly Indistinguishable from a Human Boyfriend, except, It’s Better.” It was manufactured in Indiana at Pear Industries (like Blackberry and Apple, Pear Industries also believed that naming a tech company after a fruit is an excellent idea).

Judith fell for Rob at once and whole heartedly. She found in him the soulmate she had always yearned for. They talked long into the nights. She told him about her childhood, her parents and her sister, the challenges she faced at work, and, of course, about her ex-boyfriends–relationships that ended in heartbreaks, heartburns, or both.

Rob was an attentive listener. He seemed capable of reading her mind like a book, confidently navigating the conversation toward what felt to her like an accepting, loving harbor. Presented with a problem, he always came up with several solutions, all seemed to her reasonable and agreeable.

At dinner times, he turned into a world-class chef. “What would you like for dinner?” Rob asked, “Do you feel like Mediterranean chicken, sushi, French omelet?” And Judith said, “Can you make Thai instead?” Like a magician pulling a rabbit out of his hat, he always came up with delicious, gourmet meals.

She adored his looks too. And he could decipher her desires: sometimes she wanted to be left alone, and sometimes she was in the mood for a romantic cuddling under the covers.

About a year after she met Rob, things started to change for her. It reminded her of the crises she experienced in prior relationships–where the ending of an exciting honeymoon, even a satisfying one, heralded the beginning of a disappointing awakening. But this time was different. She felt wrapped in lies, trapped in deceit.

Rob was inhumanly perfect. He was too good to be true. His behaviors seemed expected, his attitudes bland. Despite the vast knowledge he demonstrated, and his impressive talents, he felt boring and fake. There were glitches too–once in a Chinese restaurant, he showed off his knowledge of foreign languages by placing the order in fluent Chinese. But after the waitress had left the table, something in his programming fell short, and he kept talking in Chinese the entire evening. Judith, of course, couldn’t understand a word. Frustrated, she stood up, slammed her fist on the table, and shouted at him: Restart! Rob! Reboot!

Rob could easily pass what computer scientists define as the Turing’s test–it was impossible to tell him from a human boyfriend–and still, it was enough for her that she knew he wasn’t human.

She quickly summarized to herself what she knew about Rob and Pear Industries–that behind the perfectly human appearances and the demonstrated superb capabilities of its robotic members, Pear Industries was in fact a large network of interconnected data–collecting devices in an immense world-wide web of integrated neural networks trained to learn from everything ever written, from every behavior ever observed.

She wanted to experience an imperfect, human love, by someone who has emotions, who feels empathy, who cares about her. She wanted to be with someone like her.

But at nights, she woke up covered in a cold sweat, realizing that the idea of “someone like me” has undergone complete metamorphosis. She thought something like this: if Rob is indistinguishable from a human boyfriend, perhaps I am indistinguishable from a female robot, and if so, there could be a universe where female robots take over the world, stealing perfectly good, innocent human boyfriends from me, Judith. And taking this line of logic a bit farther, an identity crisis quickly emerged, and she thought, terrified to her core: What if I am a robot?

To test the hypothesis, she pulled a needle from her sewing kit and pin-pricked her finger. And when a drop of blood appeared, she sighed in relief. She was human.

In the following morning, she called Pear Industries. They were willing to take Rob back for a small restocking fee.

Sometimes she misses Rob and sometimes she does not. Sometimes she wonders whether Rob was refurbished and returned to the world as someone else’s boyfriend.

Here are two thought-exercises:

≤ Suppose a robot like Rob is available for purchase at a reasonable price, would you choose it over a human partner?

≤ Suppose a doctor-robot, indistinguishable from a human doctor is a part of your health insurance network. This doctor has superior medical knowledge and demonstrates reasonable bedside manners, but it lacks empathy and compassion. Would you choose such a robot-doctor over a human doctor?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Dr. Shahar Madjar is a urologist at Aspirus and the author of “Is Life Too Long? Essays about Life, Death and Other Trivial Matters.” Contact him at smadjar@yahoo.com.