BBC 6分钟英语学习 没有医生的未来？

English from BBC Learning English. Hello.

This is six minute English from BBC Learning English.

I'm Neil, and I'm Sam. Are you feeling well?

Sam? No headache or sore throat?

No. I feel fine. Thanks, neil.

Why

do you ask? Well, I've been reading some

inspirational stories about the doctors and

nurses fighting co When I was a boy, I always dreamed of becoming a doctor.

Ah, I see. Have you ever been in hospital?

Yes, I have. And I remember the nurses bedside manner.

You know, the kind and caring way that doctors and nurses treat people who are ill.

Nowadays, more and more of the jobs that humans do are being carried out by machines, but I doubt that a doctor's bedside manner could easily be replaced by a robot.

In this program, will be discussing whether the revolution in artificial intelligence, often shortened to AI, could replace human doctors and nurses.

We'll be asking, can you imagine a future without doctors?

In fact, machines are already doing some of the jobs traditionally done by doctors, scanning people's bodies to detect skin cancer, E.G.

Yes, that's true, sam. And it links to my quiz question, which is about human skin.

It's a well known fact that skin is the human body's largest organ.

But how much skin does the average adult have?

Is it A, 2 m²? B, 3 m², or see, 4 m²?

Of course, our skin gets loose as we age, but I can't believe there's 3 m² of it.

I'll say the answer is a two square MRS.

OK, we'll find out if that's correct later.

Every year in the UK, over 5 million people are treated for skin cancer.

Catch it early, and your chances of survival are increased.

Usually, a skin specialist or dermatologist will examine your skin using a handheld microscope.

But in 2017, a team of researchers at Stanford Medical School made an exciting announcement.

Here's Oxford University researcher Daniel Suskind telling BBC World Service Program the big idea, what the medics at Stanford had invented.

The team of researchers at Stanford last year, announced the development of a system that, if you give it a photo of a freckle, it can tell you as accurately as 21 leading dermatologists whether or not that freckle is cancerous.

The Stanford medical team had invented an AI system to analyze freckles, small brown spots found on people's skin, especially on pale skin.

As it turned out, the AI program was bettyman doctors telling whether a freckle was harmless or cancerous, connected to some type of cancer.

So it seems that artificial intelligence is already replacing humans when it comes to detecting cancer and doing a better job of it.

But Daniel Suskind isn't convinced. One reason is that AI systems still need humans to program them.

And as it turns out, knowing exactly how doctors detect illness remains something of a mystery.

Here's Daniel Suskind again in conversation with BBC World Service Program.

The big idea, if you ask a doctor how is they make a diagnosis?

They might be able to point you to particularly revealing parts of a reference book, or give you a few rules of thumb.

But ultimately they struggle. They'd say, again, it requires things like creativity and judgment, and these things are very difficult to articulate.

And so tradition, it's been thought very hard to automate.

If a human being can't explain how they do these special things, where on Earth do we begin?

In writing instructions from machine to follow?

Most doctors find it difficult to explain how they make a diagnosis.

Their judgment about what someone's particular sickness is made by examining them.

Diagnosing someone's illness is complicated. But there are some rules of thumb.

A rule of thumb is a practical but approximate way of doing something, e.g.

when cooking. A good rule of thumb is two portions of water to one portion of rice, exactly.

And because identifying sickness is so difficult, daniel says, where on Earth do we begin writing instructions for a machine?

We use phrases like Where? How or What on Earth to show feelings like anger, surprise or disbelief.

I might show surprise by asking, sam, how on earth did you know the answer to that?

Ah ha. I guess you're talking about your quiz questionnaire, and you didn't be so surprised.

I'm naturally brainy, of course you are.

In my quiz question, I ask Sam, how much skin there is on an adult human body?

And I said it was a 2 m²,

which was the correct answer. With your brains, I think you'd make a good doctor, sam, and I'm sure you'd have a good bedside manner to Ah, you mean the kind and caring way that doctors and nurses cheat their patients?

OK, let's recap the rest of the vocabulary,

starting with freckle. A

small brown spot on someone's skin.

Freckles are usually harmless, but some skin spots can be cancerous, connected to cancer, the doctor's diagnosis is their judgment about what someone's particular sickness or disease is.

A rule of thumb is a useful but approximate way of doing or measuring something.

And finally, we use phrases like Where on Earth as a way to show emotions like anger, surprise or disbelief.

That's all for this program. But join us for the next edition of Six Minute English, when we'll discuss another trending topic and the related vocabulary.

Why on Earth would you MS.

it? Good Bye for now. Good Bye.

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