COVIDYSTOPIA- 4-24, 2030 (Around lunch time, somewhere in a metropolis in Asia)
Dr. C was out on his lunch break. The medical system had undergone drastic changes after the 2020 crisis which had hit medical personnel badly. Video calls with patients for diagnosis during the lockdowns, was how the shift had started. Complications soon surfaced when hackers started blackmailing the patients. This went on for a while till a group of doctors came up with a secure solution FirstlyNoHarm (FNH) which got accepted by his government.
FNH was into year two, when the folks at Cicero-AI had reached out for a collaborative venture. FNH soon became a different beast. Patient diagnosis, treatment and surgeries became automated to a great extent. FNH kept consuming new patient data and microfilm archives to further its experience. These days, a good percentage of patients were successfully diagnosed and treated by FNH.
Dr. C was part of the medical team supporting the AI, whose job was to be a second opinion/reviewer to the AI's decisions. It mostly just involved having the data re-evaluated by FNH and it would correct the error in the second attempt. He had an appointment with FNH later today for his therapy. He felt odd having to talk to the very system which made him depressed, about how it was making him depressed.
(Disclaimer – this is fiction, exploring the what-ifs, post pandemic. Any resemblance to anyone living or dead is coincidental!)