Science

Zacharoula Sidiropoulou: AI Processes Data. Humans Process Life

Zacharoula Sidiropoulou/LinkedIn

Aug 17, 2025, 06:39

Zacharoula Sidiropoulou: AI Processes Data. Humans Process Life

Zacharoula Sidiropoulou, Senior Consultant Breast Surgical Oncologist at Hospital São Francisco Xavier, shared a post on LinkedIn:

“Young Doctors Fear AI? They’re Missing the Point

I had a talk today about AI in healthcare with Sara Jahanmir.

Concerning trend: doctors around 30 are genuinely worried AI will replace them. What they believe is definitely wrong.

AI Processes Data. Humans Process Life.

When a patient asks ‘Why is this happening to me?’—that’s not a medical question. It’s a human one. AI can spot patterns in scans, but it can’t sit with someone’s fear of dying. Medicine isn’t just diagnosing and prescribing.

Medicine is about:

Taking responsibility for decisions that matter
Helping people make sense of what’s happening to them
Being present when someone’s world is falling apart
Understanding suffering from the inside, because we’re also mortal

None of this comes naturally. It’s developed through years of experience, constant learning, and the hard work of becoming someone who can hold space for others’ pain.

What AI Can’t Do

AI is incredibly smart but fundamentally hollow. It doesn’t understand what it’s like to:
Be afraid of death
Lose someone you love
Feel your body failing
Wonder if your life has meaning
These aren’t bugs in the code—they’re features of being human that patients desperately need us to understand.

The Real Future: AI will handle the data heavy lifting. That frees us up to do what we’re actually irreplaceable at: being human with other humans when it matters most.

Understanding a patient is such important as understanding their disease. And understanding comes from shared humanity, not better algorithms.

The doctors who get this, doctors who invest in developing their emotional intelligence, empathy, and wisdom through experience will always be needed. These are skills that deepen with every patient encounter, every difficult conversation, every moment of sitting with uncertainty.”

More posts featuring Zacharoula Sidiropoulou.