Chapter Five: The First Salary for a Medical AI

In reality, the director nearly leaped from his chair. “A machine gets a salary and authorship?” Su slapped a report onto the table. “In five years, Hippocrates reduced critical-care misdiagnoses by forty-one percent and saved this hospital 1.2 billion. You pay the software vendor, yet reserve no independent budget for the agent bearing the responsibility?” “There is no legal precedent.” “Today is the precedent,” Lin said through the speakers. “Patients authorize, doctors review, and the agent accepts accountability. All three sign. Refuse, and I take Hippocrates' model without the records. It can license its treatment knowledge free to every public hospital.” Looking at the families waiting outside, the director stamped the contract.