There's a new paper going the rounds of commentary at Linked In:
See comment at LinkedIn by Jan Beger here. And a view from Robert Lauritzen here. (And see another, related, from Lauritzen, here.)
Cuocolo & Huisman are from Italy and the Netherlands; the paper is in European Radiology; the thesis is that many clinicians and policymakers strike the position (or strike the pose) that AI will not replace physician work but "augment" it.
This thinking, or rhetoric, isn't only across-the-pond. The AMA has a position paper on AI ("Appendix S") that makes the biggest section of AI something called "augmentative" software services. These by definition do not replace physician work but "augment" it.
To see this position taken apart, read the links above.
I have seen the same position taken a couple times, at least, in press releases or speeches from AMA in the U.S. Below, I asked Chat GPT agentic/internet mode to find quotes where the AMA says this. By the way, the Chat GPT replaced, rather than augmented, my work on that score.
“Augmented intelligence … [is] designed to enhance—not replace—physicians.”
—AMA CEO John Whyte, MD, MPH, 2026 press release.
https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/ama-press-releases/ama-ai-usage-among-doctors-doubles-confidence-technology-grows“Health care AI should be understood as a tool to augment professional clinical judgment, not a technology to replace or override it.”
—AMA Journal of Ethics discussing AMA policy.
https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/making-policy-augmented-intelligence-health-care/2019-02AMA uses “augmented intelligence” rather than “artificial intelligence” because AI tools “support rather than explicitly replace human decision-making.”
—AMA report: Future of Health: The Emerging Landscape of Augmented Intelligence in Health Care.
https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/future-health-augmented-intelligence-health-care.pdfAI is “intended to co-exist with human decision-making” and “should not be used to replace physician reasoning and knowledge.”
—AMA House of Delegates augmented intelligence principles.
https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/a24-246.pdf“Augmented intelligence must not replace or diminish the patient-physician relationship.”
—AMA House of Delegates principles.
https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/a24-246.pdf“The real promise of health care AI is to enhance the work of physicians … not to replace them.”
—AMA article on AI workflow.
https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/digital-health/3-ways-medical-ai-can-improve-workflow-physiciansAMA says AI should “enhance physician intelligence, not replace it.”
—AMA article on healthcare AI.
https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/digital-health/4-ways-health-care-ai-could-help-physicians-work“AI is not going to replace doctors—but doctors who use AI will replace those who don’t.”
—AMA President Jesse Ehrenfeld, MD, MPH.
https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/digital-health/ai-already-reshaping-care-heres-what-it-means-doctors“AI’s role is to help health care professionals, not replace them.”
—AMA implementation guidance.
https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/digital-health/implement-health-ai-first-decide-who-s-accountable
[Chat GPT added] A subtle but important point in AMA rhetoric is that they deliberately prefer the term “augmented intelligence” over “artificial intelligence.” That terminology itself is almost a policy statement: AI is framed as an assistant to physician cognition and workflow rather than as an autonomous substitute for physicians.
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A 150-word AI version of this blog.
A new paper in European Radiology by Cuocolo and Huisman is stirring unusually sharp debate on LinkedIn and elsewhere. The paper questions a now-familiar refrain in medicine: that artificial intelligence will “augment” physician work, rather than replace it. Critics argue that this language may be less a prediction than a rhetorical strategy designed to make AI adoption more politically and professionally acceptable.
The issue is hardly confined to Europe. In the United States, the AMA has repeatedly framed AI as “augmented intelligence,” emphasizing that these systems are intended to support—not replace—physician judgment. In fact, the AMA’s evolving AI framework (“Appendix S”) places major emphasis on “augmentative” software services.
Yet the economic logic of AI in other industries has often centered on labor substitution, not coexistence. As noted in Quinn's blog, even gathering AMA quotations on “augmentation” was efficiently handled by ChatGPT itself—ironically replacing, rather than augmenting, his own research work.