A social media post from Elon Musk set off a flurry of commentary across the surgical community over the last week.
To recap, Musk – the billionaire entrepreneur and technology guru best known for building companies like Tesla and SpaceX – believes that AI-powered robots will soon take over a lot of the highly skilled functions surgeons perform in the operating room.
Leaders in the ambulatory surgery center (ASC) space aren’t convinced his forecast is realistic, however.
“Robots will surpass good human surgeons within a few years and the best human surgeons within ~5 years,” Musk wrote, adding that Neuralink had to use a robot for its brain-computer electrode insertion because “it was impossible for a human to achieve the required speed and precision.”
The post came just days after Medtronic released results from 137 real-world surgeries performed using its Hugo robotic system. The system achieved a 98.5% overall success rate, far exceeding the 85% benchmark, with extremely low complication rates: 3.7% for prostate surgeries, 1.9% for kidney surgeries and 17.9% for bladder surgeries. Just two procedures were converted back to traditional surgery.
While the data reinforced confidence in robotic assistance, Musk’s claim of near-future human replacement triggered a different reaction from ASC stakeholders.
“I admire Elon Musk as an exceptional entrepreneur and visionary,” Wes Battiste, CEO and founder of Destin Surgery Center and an advisor with Avanza Healthcare, told Ambulatory Surgery Center News. “But I would beg to differ with him in regard to his recent post referencing AI replacing surgeons in the next five years.”
Battiste said that while AI is powerful in data-driven applications, it falls short when faced with human variability.
“AI derives its applicability from simulating human intelligence through algorithms that analyze data, identify patterns, and make decisions based on those patterns. The practice of medicine and specifically the application of surgery have data points but there is subjectivity which negates the impact of AI,” he said. “If AI uses ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ as its basis for anatomical reference, there will be many instances in which human anatomy does not conform to the textbook. Hence the reason medicine is called an art and not a science.”
Michael McClain, managing partner at Left Coast Healthcare Advisors, said that he sometimes thinks Musk is more interested in getting attention than in promoting discourse.
“The fact is that AI is moving much faster than regulation can keep up, and my concern is that we need to rapidly increase our attention on the oversight and governance models on how we use AI in health care,” he told ASC News.
McClain added that while some AI agents might perform simple surgeries in the near future, there is a ton of work to do in terms of safety, reliability, liability and governance on existing AI deployments before truly autonomous surgery is a remote possibility.
Of course, robotics and AI are already making their mark in surgery centers, Joan Dentler, founder of Avanza Healthcare Strategies, told ASC News.
“Robots are already being used in all sorts of surgical procedures,” Dentler said. “It only makes sense that combining AI with robotics will be more commonplace in operating rooms in the future.”
Even so, she doesn’t see them displacing human talent entirely.
“I’m not sure that the technology will fully replace human surgeons,” she said. “Perhaps it will augment their abilities.”
