PODCAST:
Sept. 1, 2026 ~ Dr. Michael Sjoding, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Michigan Medicine, talks to Chris Renwick and Lloyd Jackson about how AI is turning to health care to fix it’s bad reputation. How much are doctors using AI?
As public perception on artificial intelligence remains skeptical at best, or sour at worst, giant tech companies are looking to the healthcare sector to help improve the tech’s public approval.
AI is becoming a regular part of the healthcare industry, with a recent survey from the American Medical Association reporting that 81% of phytins surveyed said they used AI “to stay on top of medical research, create discharge instructions, document medical visits and more.” Major investments are also being made between the sectors, with computer chip manufacturer NVIDIA and pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly announcing in January that they will invest up to $1 billion to create an AI lab to help with “drug discovery.”
These public pushes for AI investment into healthcare could be part of a strategy to help shore up public acceptance of the technology, with the Wall Street Journal recently reporting that AI company Anthropic, the makers of Claude, is looking to promote AI use in healthcare to improve AI’s reputation and instill confidence in potential investors.
Rapidly-growing AI tech has garnered a divisive reputation in recent years, with a recent YouGov/Economist poll finding that majority of Americans (71%) think that AI development is moving too fast. Another poll from NBC News, 57% of voters said they thought the risks of AI outweigh its benefits, compared with to the 34% who thought differently. Concerns over AI have grown due to potential copyright issues with AI training data, the environmental impact, potential job loss to AI, and the proliferation of data centers associated with increased utility bills and heavy water use.
However, Dr. Michael Sjoding, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Michigan Medicine, told WJR that one way doctors are using AI is by creating “ambient AI scribes” to help summarize appointments, calling the technology a “positive” for healthcare.
“When you go to the doctor, they might ask you now, ‘Hey, can I record this conversation?’ using a program that’s typically on our phone,” Sjoding said. “That conversation can listen to the entire medical conversation that you’re having, and that tool can then draft the medical notes for the doctor, which the doctor would then hopefully edit and finalize.”
A recent study from the Ohio State University found that public openness to AI use in healthcare fell from a 52% approval rating in 2024 to 42% in 2026.
