AI Rounds by the Cumming School of Medicine
Aug 26, 2026 · 19 min · 10 segments
What problem did we say we were solving, and what would we have done about it if AI had never existed? That is the question we'll tackle this episode. Not whether AI tools work — they do, but that is…
I want to start with a question today that sounds simple, but turns out not to be.
And the question is, if the tool didn't exist, what would we have done? That's what we're going to talk about today.
We're not going to talk about does this tool work? We're not going to talk about should we use AI? We're going to talk about something narrower and I think more useful, which is what problem did we say we were solving and what would we have done about that problem if AI hadn't shown up? Everything I'm going to describe in the next 20 minutes or so involves AI tools that work.
A tool can perform exactly as advertised, but still be pointed at the wrong target.
Evgeny Morozov's term from 2013, and his definition is sharper than the way the word usually gets used, which is recasting complicated social situations as neat problems with clean, computable solutions, and then, crucially, letting the availability of a solution determine which problem we decide we have.
That last part is the mechanism, not we picked the wrong fix, something a little more subtle.
And two quick distinctions, because the word gets thrown around loosely, and I really want to be precise about what we're talking about today.
Solutionism is a specific error in reasoning, a diagnostic error, if you want a clinical framing.
It's the error of moving to management before you have finished working up the problem.
Second, and this is when people miss, solutionism is not the claim that the tool doesn't work.
The uncomfortable cases are exactly the ones where the tool works, where the numbers are real, the satisfaction scores are up, the pilot succeeded, and the thing you originally said you were worried about is still there, untouched, sitting exactly where it was.
So here's the test I would like you to hold for the rest of this episode.
I want to start with a question today that sounds simple, but turns out not to be.
And the question is, if the tool didn't exist, what would we have done? That's what we're going to talk about today.
We're not going to talk about does this tool work? We're not going to talk about should we use AI? We're going to talk about something narrower and I think more useful, which is what problem did we say we were solving and what would we have done about that problem if AI hadn't shown up? Everything I'm going to describe in the next 20 minutes or so involves AI tools that work.
A tool can perform exactly as advertised, but still be pointed at the wrong target.
Evgeny Morozov's term from 2013, and his definition is sharper than the way the word usually gets used, which is recasting complicated social situations as neat problems with clean, computable solutions, and then, crucially, letting the availability of a solution determine which problem we decide we have.
That last part is the mechanism, not we picked the wrong fix, something a little more subtle.
And two quick distinctions, because the word gets thrown around loosely, and I really want to be precise about what we're talking about today.
Solutionism is a specific error in reasoning, a diagnostic error, if you want a clinical framing.
It's the error of moving to management before you have finished working up the problem.
Second, and this is when people miss, solutionism is not the claim that the tool doesn't work.
The uncomfortable cases are exactly the ones where the tool works, where the numbers are real, the satisfaction scores are up, the pilot succeeded, and the thing you originally said you were worried about is still there, untouched, sitting exactly where it was.
So here's the test I would like you to hold for the rest of this episode.
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