Every episode of HBO Pitt contains a degree of medical trauma that makes a hospital drama almost feel like a horror series. Some patients deal with severe lacerations, while others battle nasty blood infections that could cost them limbs, and the chaos of working in the ER is often left behind. PittThe central characters are shaken. But just as alarming as many of them PittMore immediate moments may be, what’s even more troubling is the show’s slowly simmering subplot about hospitals adopting generative artificial intelligence.
In its second season, Pitt again records all events that occur during a single 15-hour daily shift in the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center emergency room. The second season takes place on the 4th of July – one of the busiest days in hospitals – and the chief attending physician, Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch (Noah Wyle) is working his last shift before taking a much-needed vacation. Given that Dr. With Robby gone for three months, the hospital brings in Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi) to help run the ER while he’s gone. There is some personality friction between the participants, but Dr. Robby mostly respects how Dr. Al-Hashimi directs his work. besides when he insists that the hospital would be better off if it committed to using a piece of AI-powered transcription software.
Although this season starts off relatively calm, the day becomes increasingly stressful for everyone PittThe characters ‘s when the hospital fills up with people who need medical help. Staying on top of her work is especially taxing for Dr. Trinity Santos (Isa Briones), a sophomore in residence because she simply doesn’t have enough time to see all her patients and meticulously record all their symptoms in their medical charts.
Dr. Al-Hashimi knows that AI-generated transcripts aren’t perfect, but he sees Dr. Santos as a perfect example of a doctor who could go through their mapping more quickly with the help of this technology. To the credit of dummy software, that does accurately transcribe most of the dictation of Dr. Santos. But both doctors are stunned when a surgeon storms into the emergency room in a rage after receiving charts with very obvious, glaring errors that could have resulted in patients receiving the wrong care.
Instead of jumping headlong into the headline-grabbing “generative AI is bad and dangerous” plot, Pitt took the time to explore the reasons why doctors might want to use this kind of technology and the importance of looking at it with some skepticism. Dr. Al-Hashimi encourages his medical students and residents to use transcription software, but also carefully cautions them to double-check any work completed with AI, because they—not their tools—are responsible for how patients are treated. Each of the warnings Dr. Al-Hashimi’s appears to be Pitt acknowledging real-life cases of patients suing hospitals over botched surgeries involving the use of artificial intelligence tools and studies that found large language models unreliable in their ability to accurately predict patient health outcomes. Pitt also uses artificial intelligence support Dr. Al-Hashimi to find out how adopting technology in a professional environment can actually create more busy work (see: double checking transcripts) while contributing to burnout. At first it seems that Dr. Al-Hashimi might be the main antagonistic presence this season, but PittThe writing team very smartly decided to focus on the bigger idea.
In this season Pitt he repeatedly points out that technology can only do so much to solve problems when it’s not actually designed to solve a real problem. AI-powered transcription can Dr. To help Santos finish charts faster (with some bugs thrown in for good measure). But the software can’t do much with an emergency room that’s understaffed or when doctors and nurses are suddenly tasked with seeing more patients after another hospital shuts down.
The way characters like Dr. Inundated with demanding patients who spent hours in overcrowded waiting rooms, Santos and nurses like Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa) feel like a direct reflection of the real problems facing hospitals across the country. To really keep up with your workload, PittEmergency personnel really need more hands on deck and more space to provide adequate care to patients. But with the country facing a nursing shortage and the fictional hospital perpetually underfunded, it turns out administrators would like to try boosting productivity with the help of artificial intelligence.
Pitt could easily (and still can) tell a story before the end of the season about how errors caused by the use of AI genes lead to errors in operating rooms that can expose medical professionals to lawsuits. But the show is right to highlight the fact that there are some critical issues in the workplace that can’t be solved simply by throwing new kinds of technology at them.