Spine surgeons, robot arms and one very good argument about AI
From a LinkedIn post, September 2026, after the closing keynote at the 27th Annual Meeting of the Israel Spine Society.
I gave the closing keynote at the Israel Spine Society's 27th Annual Meeting. Three days covered the whole field; AI was one session in it, and mine was the last slot.
Robotic systems place pedicle screws with roughly 97–99% accuracy in a meta-analysis, yet only a minority of screws in North America go in that way. The system navigates; the surgeon places the screw. The gap was never capability.
What stayed with me was the room. Deskilling came up before I raised it, and so did the question of who owns the call when the model and the surgeon disagree. Neither is a technology question.
The part that will change most people's week is not in the operating room at all: notes that write themselves out of the conversation you already had, explanations patients actually read, and the current literature available in the room when the question comes up.
Thanks to Prof. Nimrod Rahamimov and Dr. Ory Keynan for the platform, and to Dr. Dana Avraham for co-moderating the AI session ahead of my slot.