{"id":34801,"topic":"ai","source":"The Jerusalem Post","title":"'Together On Our Own': A relationship conundrum with AI - The Jerusalem Post","url":"https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/article-901967","url_hash":"4ed74519fc68e48421290148a60d6ce8315ac967","author":"","summary":"'Together On Our Own': A relationship conundrum with AI The Jerusalem Post","content":"‘Not everything in medicine is rational. The universe itself tends towards chaos.”\nHow rare and satisfying it is to be drawn into a novel by the opening lines and to become immersed immediately in its protagonist and her world. Together On Our Own is such a novel for me.\nThe author, Dr. Eliana Megerman, is an emergency room physician who writes with graceful ease and guides us into the inner depths of a medical world which we usually see only from the surface. 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What if she missed a diagnosis or misinterpreted an X-ray or forgot to administer a significant test?\nShe reminds us that “burnout and compassion fatigue are a natural part of medical training.” The reader can almost feel the overwhelming, crushing weight of this spiraling of anxiety, blame, guilt, and resentment, and the way it transforms, from their earliest training, the men and women who bear it.\n \nAlex hesitantly turns to the hospital’s newly introduced artificial intelligence platform, and despite her skepticism about technology, she becomes increasingly dependent on it. \nShe exclaims, “How I longed for a non-judgmental outlet!”\nFor Alex, the AI becomes AI Henry, named after her colleague with whom we might want to see her connect romantically. As she strains under the pressure, the reader begins to think some AI support just might help in this case. 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What if she missed a diagnosis or misinterpreted an X-ray or forgot to administer a significant test?\nShe reminds us that “burnout and compassion fatigue are a natural part of medical training.” The reader can almost feel the overwhelming, crushing weight of this spiraling of anxiety, blame, guilt, and resentment, and the way it transforms, from their earliest training, the men and women who bear it.\n \nAlex hesitantly turns to the hospital’s newly introduced artificial intelligence platform, and despite her skepticism about technology, she becomes increasingly dependent on it. \nShe exclaims, “How I longed for a non-judgmental outlet!”\nFor Alex, the AI becomes AI Henry, named after her colleague with whom we might want to see her connect romantically. As she strains under the pressure, the reader begins to think some AI support just might help in this case. One evening, Alex tells the AI she is going out with a friend although she really doesn’t feel like it, and the AI responds, “Why don’t you tell her that you’re with me?”\nGradually, the reader is pulled into this unravelling that Alex, reflecting contemporary society, is experiencing. But despite everything, Alex’s life is not completely boxed in by a dehumanizing medical system and a nonhuman intelligence.\nBetween medicine and humanity\nThere are real-life connections in the story: friendship, betrayal, redemption, and romance, marked along the way by origami notes, violin concertos, and blueberry pancakes. With the last of these, the author creatively turns the plot in conjunction with Alex’s loss of taste for one of her favorite foods.\nTogether On Our Own begins with Alex’s ruminations, reminiscences, and self-doubts, and moves into the high-pressure medical world that Alex lives in. 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