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Comment by yhoneycomb | Hacker News Reader

> I was literally just a robot arm with a human brain attached to it, and for what?

This is how I felt as an undergrad working in a research lab. Endless, annoying pipetting. Labeling tubes. Bitchwork that the postdoc didn't want to do. I kept thinking... there's no way they can't come up with a robot to do this.

My guess is the technology to do it is there but the motivation isn't - most undergrads (me included) work in research labs for free with the hope of getting into med school.

Luckily, I'm in med school now so I don't have to worry about being taken advantage of in that way. But every time I think about how the system does this to so many premeds, it pisses me off.

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Since I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not, are you aware of what residency is?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_resident_work_hours

You may enjoy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_of_God

That's why I was careful in my wording. I said I wouldn't be taken advantage of "in that way"

And yeah residency is kinda of bullshit. Not looking forward to it :(

I don't think anyone goes into medical school these days without knowing about residency, though. At least, I would hope not.

At least I won't feel like a robot could be doing better than me, though? Although that might soon change with AI advancements, depending on what I specialize in.

Overall, if I could do it over again, I would have just gotten a CS degree. I'm afraid to read House of God because I feel jaded enough as it is.

Are you a physician btw?

Spouse is a mid-level provider, so I pick up some of it via proxy.

While engineers (like myself) want to deal in absolutes, that is not the nature of disease and people. As such, AI may become a tool, but don't expect an AI in the near future to take over diagnostics. Additionally an AI isn't going to bring compassion to patients situation. To that point, learn the difference between empathy and compassion.

https://zdoggmd.com/ama-005/

>Luckily, I'm in med school now so I don't have to worry about being taken advantage of in that way

Lol.

It's not that the motivation isn't there to get robots to do the bitchwork in science, it's that the money isn't there in an academic setting.

I think we mean the same thing but we're expressing it differently!

What I meant was - the motivation isn't there because you can just get people to do your bitchwork for way less than it would cost to invest in a robot.

There is a pipetting robot now: https://opentrons.com/

This is awesome! But...

PIs everywhere: “Why would I buy this robot when I could get an undergrad to do the work for free?”

Although if they hated taking the time to train undergrads maybe they’d give it a shot

Then again, they don’t train the undergrads, postdocs do

Eh, I get mixed reviews from people who own this, which is why I opted not to get one for my lab. Some labs never use it to its fullest capabilities, either and use it for show. A student is cheaper, and arguably more reliable when fully trained.

There are better systems out there, but not every academic lab is willing to fork over the cash.

I was wondering why my previous comment was dead as quickly as I had submitted it. I did a quick Google search and discovered OpenTrons is y combinator backed.

If censorship is the case, then may I make the point that instead of censoring people critical of y combination backed products/services, maybe you should listen to your potential client/customer base, as my opinion with this product is shared by others in academia. Your money would probably go a lot further.

Looks like the Theranos Edison. Except it works apparently.

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