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...