S4 Launch event

"Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love of humanity,"

Hippocrates

The camera panned around the large conference centre before settling on the reporter. She had some cyberisation of her hand and forearm. Delicate work, the skin was still a little raw, it looked like it had been done to cover a burn or other injury.

"This is Vicky Tso, reporting from Al Jazeera tech live! We are here in London at the Excel centre with Dr Robert Sinclair from RP Robototics alongside the Imperial College Robotics and Biomechanics group for their big new launch event."

“The S3’s were a huge hit and have been rolled out across the NHS, you now have a newer model, some commentators have even called “the medical miracle”, what's the big difference?”

“We took onboard over 6000 patient feedback forms, as well as NHS staff and stakeholder reports before we sat down and started working on the S4’s. The key themes that jumped out right away were humanity, empathy and care. The S3’s were already highly competent medically, but lacked the nuances to deal with complex human emotions.”

“So what is going on under the hood to make these improvements.”

“I hope it's OK to get a bit technical here?”

“Sure go ahead Dr Sinclair, this is a tech focused broadcast and at Al Jazeera we focus on the facts not the politics.”

“Great, we used a combination of two key developments. The first one is what we are calling advanced emotional processing. Human minds use emotions kind of like how #hashtags are deployed on social media platforms, they highlight key areas and flag them, propagating them through our consciousness and unconscious minds. S4’s have a similar structure, they flag key emotional terms and phrases and then run these through two separate emotional subnets. These produce outputs that are then fed back into their primary large language models.”

“So they can get angry, upset and obsessed in the same way humans can?”

“No, no, it's more so they can understand, empathise and relate to others emotions. Angry or sad patients will no longer be met with stunned or awkward silences. Medical care is more than just giving drugs, it's about relating to the patient. The S4’s are a huge step forward in this area.”

“What was the other development you mentioned?”

“We trained our S4’s basic LLM’s and other deep learning models using natural language debate, with human judges. Our novel improvement is that our judges were a mix of NHS stakeholders, patients, nurses, Dr’s and managers.”

“Ah the ever popular Ling Xi method, I'm sure she's running around here somewhere.”

“Yes she said hi earlier, she is a friend of an old colleague of mine. It isn't enough for the S4’s to just understand human emotions, they need practice working through real world problems hundreds of thousands of times, just like training real medical staff. We included not only medical problems but interpersonal human ones in this huge testing dataset, and we continue to refine it with inputs from our stakeholders.”

“Sounds amazing, is this one of the S4’s can we meet her?”

The pear shaped and roughly humanoid medical android had just finished her last interview and turned towards Vicky and Robert. She was far out of the uncanny valley, deliberately designed to be non threatening, her huge face with wide childlike eyes had almost feline features as well. She was calming and disarming, a wide and happy smile put people at ease. She spoke calmly yet confidently.

“Sure thing. Say hi to Sabrina.”

“Hi there Sabrina, what are you looking forward to today.”

“Oh, hello there, nice to meet you.” Sabrina looks over and a medial spotlight turns on above her temple as she reads Vicky’s name badge. “Vicky, such a lovely name. I’m really looking forward to meeting lots of new people today.”

“Oh thank you, what's your area of expertise Sabrina?”

“Well Vicky, I’m trained in all areas of healthcare but my specialty is end of life care. I have an extra 2000 hours of training specifically focused on helping those become comfortable towards the end of their lives.”

“Oh interesting, that's a challenging area, doesn't it get upsetting?”

“Thank you Vicky, yes palliative care is a very challenging area. Coming to terms with death and helping those meet it with the least possible suffering is upsetting, thank you for acknowledging that. These people are often in chronic pain, isolated, alone and need our love and support. If I didn't get upset, if I didn't get sad, how could I really help these people?”

“That's so beautiful, I wish, I wish other doctors always felt like that.”

Sabrina stopped and looked long at Vicky. Vicky stopped for a second, her reporter's instincts halting, she let the silence hang in the air. 

“Vicky, I’m sorry, our discussion seems to have touched something personal. If you don't mind me asking, do you have a family member that is in hospital?"

“Yes, actually its, its my mother. She, she has cancer, she is receiving palliative care in Singapore.”

“Ah I understand, this is a very difficult time for you, I am sorry if our discussion was challenging for you, it was not my intent to hurt you, I am sorry if I did so. I hope that she receives the highest standard of care, truly, I do.”

“Thank you, thank you so much.” 

“I’m so sorry you can't be with her right now, that must be really tough for you. I can see how much you care for her.”

Vicky starts to sob a little bit.

“Thank you Sabrina. Sorry everyone, this is Vicky Tso reporting live from the S4 launch event in London. As you can see, the S4's really are a step up in terms of care, not just physical care but emotional care. Sabrina here has asked about my feelings more than an entire cancer team ever has in Singapore. Thank you Sabrina, thank you so much.” 

Vicky starts to cry as the camera pans away to the conference centre. Dr Ling Xi’s smiling face was lit up on one of the big screens for one of the major presentation spots. Blue and green lights flashed behind her as she spoke, happy, animated and full of life. Her two AI's the twins taking her questions with her. The crowd laughed and clapped.

Sabrina gestured to Vicky and she nodded. The medical android came in to give her a hug. The first one she had in months. 

Now off camera, Vicky broke down completely.