I got a letter to the editor published in today’s (May 3rd, 2026) Seattle Times.
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/seattle-times-letters-roundup-may-3-2026/
I wrote:
Healthcare: AI’s dystopian future is now
Recently, I led a question-and-answer session at Linuxfest Northwest, a gathering of (sometimes aspiring) open source software experts. One of the questions that came up in discussion was, “What is the future of artificial intelligence (AI)”? We decided that there are three possible outcomes:
We discover some limit, something AI cannot do. We do not know what this limit is. Some jobs will still be done by humans.
A utopian future, where AI does all the work and humans live long, fulfilling lives of leisure.
A dystopian future, where AI is used to enslave humans and cause suffering.
Monday morning, I open up The Seattle Times, and there on the front page is a story about WISeR. (“WA patients agonize as Medicare AI program continues to delay care,” April 27, Business).
AI’s denying somebody treatment for pain is not a dystopian future; it is a dystopian present.
It is also a violation of the first law of robotics: “A robot must not cause harm to a human being, nor through inaction, allow a human to come to harm.”
What makes the violation more egregious is that the political party that instigated WISeR claims to be the “pro-life” party. Reprehensible.
Jeff Silverman