Artificial intelligence: the clinician of the future

Human beings have long been fascinated with the idea of artificial intelligence. This fascination is fueled by popular films such as Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and Stephen Spielberg's recent film, AI. However intriguing artificial intelligence may be, Hubert and Spencer Dreyfus contend that qualities exist that are uniquely human--the qualities thought to be inaccessible to the computer "mind." Patricia Benner further investigated the qualities that guide clinicians in making decisions and assessments that are not entirely evidence-based or grounded in scientific data. Perhaps it is the intuitive nature of the human being that separates us from the machine. The state of artificial intelligence is described herein, along with a discussion of computerized clinical decision-making and the role of the human being in these decisions.