Dr. Topol believes that A.I. can do more than enhance diagnoses and treatments. It can also save doctors from doing tasks like taking notes and reading scans, allowing them to spend more time connecting with their patients. Recently, we caught up with Dr. Topol to discuss his thoughts on where A.I. has the most potential to improve health care, where it might stumble, and how it could protect doctors from things like burnout and depression. Here are edited excerpts from our interview.

Q. Can A.I. help to lower America’s soaring health care costs?

A. Yes. The No. 1 line item of health care cost in America is human resources, which has recently grown — as of December 2017 towering over retail — to be the leading job source for our economy. By augmenting human performance, A.I. has the potential to markedly improve productivity, efficiency, work flow, accuracy and speed, both for doctors and for patients. giving more charge and control to consumers through algorithmic support of their data.

Q. Can you talk about the area of medicine where A.I. shows the most promise?

A. There are a few key areas. One is machine pattern recognition to promote the rapid and accurate reading of medical scans, slides, skin lesions, the pickup of small polyps during colonoscopy, and much more. Another is keyboard liberation, or using natural language processing of speech to synthesize notes and eliminate the ultimate source of distraction and dislike in medical encounters. A.I. can also predict key outcomes for both patients and clinicians to promote prevention.

Q. Where is A.I. most likely to fail?

A. There’s no shortage of deep liabilities for A.I. in health care. The liabilities include breaches of privacy and security, hacking, the lack of explainability of most A.I. algorithms, the potential to worsen inequities, the embedded bias and ethical quandaries.

Q. In your book you talk a lot about the rapid growth of A.I. companies in the radiology space. Will A.I. make radiologists obsolete?