this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2025
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A robot trained on videos of surgeries performed a lengthy phase of a gallbladder removal without human help. The robot operated for the first time on a lifelike patient, and during the operation, responded to and learned from voice commands from the team—like a novice surgeon working with a mentor.

The robot performed unflappably across trials and with the expertise of a skilled human surgeon, even during unexpected scenarios typical in real life medical emergencies.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 days ago (4 children)

you could not pay me enough to have my surgery done by a robot

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They obviously don't feel comfortable with the robot doing surgery on humans just yet either which is why they're not actually suggesting doing that yet. It will have to go through years and years of certification before that's even considered.

I'm sure most surgeries will still be conducted by humans but there are situations where one of these would be extremely helpful. Any situation where a surgeon isn't currently accessible and can't quickly get there. Remote communities, Disaster relief, Arctic research facilities, Starships trapped in the Delta quadrant, War zones, Ships at sea.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Do you think a 5 bed hospital will have the money to afford a robotic surgeon?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

You assume an Antarctic research facility lacks funds?

[–] _cryptagion 5 points 2 days ago

yeah, it's much better to have a towel left inside of you by a real human.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

If it were the only option, I'd gladly take it.

I rely on robots to do a lot of other things in my life, directly and indirectly.

Well, not many directly. But machines, definitely.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I trust a good machine much more than any human.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Have you considered that the machine is made by a collection of humans?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Yes. But if the machine has proven to work reliably it will usually do so for its lifetime, while humans are prone to e multitude of errors. Especially in the medical field.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

See the part that I dont like is that this is a learning algorithm trained on videos of surgeries.

That's such a fucking stupid idea. Thats literally so much worse than letting surgeons use robot arms to do surgeries as your primary source of data and making fine tuned adjustments based on visual data in addition to other electromagnetic readings

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Yeah but the training set of videos is probably infinitely larger, and the thing about AI is that if the training set is too small they don't really work at all. Once you get above a certain data set size they start to become competent.

After all I assume the people doing this research have already considered that. I doubt they're reading your comment right now and slapping their foreheads and going damn this random guy on the internet is right, he's so much more intelligent than us scientists.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (8 children)

That's such a fucking stupid idea.

Care to elaborate why?

From my point of view I don't see a problem with that. Or let's say: the potential risks highly depend on the specific setup.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Unless the videos have proper depth maps and identifiers for objects and actions they're not going to be as effective as, say, robot arm surgery data, or vr captured movement and tracking. You're basically adding a layer to the learning to first process the video correctly into something usable and then learn from that. Not very efficient and highly dependant on cameras and angles.

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[–] [email protected] 95 points 4 days ago (4 children)

Good, now add jailtime for the ceo if something goes wrong, then we'll have a very safe tech.

[–] qfe0 6 points 2 days ago

Just like how we jail every surgeon that does something wrong

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[–] [email protected] 112 points 4 days ago (6 children)

And then you‘re lying on the table. Unfortunately, your case is a little different than the standard surgery. Good luck.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 4 days ago (10 children)

At some point in a not very distant future, you will probably be better off with the robot/AI. As it will have wider knowledge of how to handle fringe cases than a human surgeon.
We are not there yet, but maybe in 10 years or maybe 20?

[–] [email protected] 35 points 4 days ago (7 children)

I'd bet on at least twenty years before it's in general use, since this is a radical change and it makes sense to be cautious about new technology in medicine. Initial clinical trials for some common, simple surgeries within ten years, though.

This is one of those cases where an algorithm carefully trained on only relevant data can have value. It isn't the same as feeding an LLM the unfiltered Internet and then expecting it to learn only from the non-crazy parts.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Or the most common cases can be automated while the more nuanced surgeries will take the actual doctors.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 4 days ago (4 children)

realistic surgery

lifelike patient

I wonder how doctors could compare this simulation to a real surgery. I’m willing to bet it’s “realistic and lifelike” in the way a 4D movie is.

Biological creatures don’t follow perfect patterns you have all sorts of unexpected things happen. I was just reading an article about someone whose entire organs are mirrored from the average person.

Nothing about humans is “standard”.

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[–] [email protected] 56 points 4 days ago (3 children)

without human help

...

responded to and learned from voice commands from the team

🤨🤔

[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 days ago

They should have specified "without physical human help."

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You underestimate the demands on a surgeon’s body to perform surgery. This makes it much less prone to tiredness, mistakes, or even if the surgeon is physically incapable in any way of continuing life saving surgery

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

That's absolutely not the point. I was criticizing the journalism, not technology. 🙄

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 days ago (3 children)

So... Judging by recent trends in AI, this will be used to devalue the labor of surgeons and be provided as the only option available to people who are not rich. People will die from what would get a human charged with neglegent homicide but, it will be covered up and, when it comes to light just how dangerous it is, nothing will happen because all of the regulatory agencies have been dismantled.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

Outside of the US there are pretty stringent rules about what can and cannot be used in the medical profession. Typically it will take at least a decade for a drug to be approved, which is actually a problem in and of itself, but you're not concerned about that, you're concerned about technology being used before it's ready.

As for "devaluing the work of surgeons", surgeons are overworked as it is, there is nowhere near enough of them. If they don't have to do simple procedures then they are available to do the more complex surgeries that actually require skill. They'll be fine. Wealth isn't really a factor in countries where healthcare isn't profit motivated.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

OR maybe everyone — including the poor — will eventually have access to robotic surgeons with the equivalent of like 500 human years of experience, but with the latest surgical best practices that have only existed in recent years. The experience gained by a single surgery could be shared across all of them.

We're talking about surgery. If some technology can provide significantly more valuable labor than its human counterpart (which, in this case, could mean more lives saved), then it might actually be worth exploring.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

That would be wonderful. The current way that the world has been "working" for a good while now makes me think it unlikely, unfortunately. The vast majority of technological innovation in the last half-century has been used to extract wealth and replace options available to the non-ultra-wealthy with inferior substitutes that are cheaper to make, often for the same effective cost.

[–] _cryptagion 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I would rather get surgery done by a robot than not get it done at all. I'm not gonna be picky about "devaluing surgeons" if my life is on the line, but if that's the hill you wanna die on then good on ya, mate.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Who's dying on what hill now?

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Not fair. A robot can watch videos and perform surgery but when I do it I'm called a "monster" and "quack".

But seriously, this robot surgeon still needs a surgeon to chaperone so what's being gained or saved? It's just surgery with extra steps. This has the same execution as RoboTaxis (which also have a human onboard for emergencies) and those things are rightly being called a nightmare. What separates this from that?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 days ago

It can't sneeze

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Human flaw. A surgeon doesnt require steady hands. So if they were in any way damaged they could still continue being a surgeon.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 4 days ago

Oh good it’s voice controlled. Because that technology works amazingly all the time.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I want that thing where a light "paints" over wounds and they heal.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 days ago (2 children)

so this helps with costs right? right? 🥺🤔🤨

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

AI and robotics are coming for the highest paid jobs first. The attack on education is much more sinister than you think. We are approaching an era where many thinking and high cost labor fields will be eliminated. This attack on education is because the plan is to replace it all with AI.

It is pretty sickening really to think of a world where your AI teacher supplied by Zombie Twitter will teach history lessons to young pupils about whether or not the Holocaust is real. I am not making this shit up.

This is no longer about wars against nations. This has become the war for the human mind and billionaires just found the cheat code.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago (2 children)

It helps the capitalists' profit margins 😊😊😊

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 days ago

thank you for removing my gallbladder robot, but i had a brain tumor

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

This was a new word for me, so I had to look it up: It's an... interesting choice of words to describe the success of a robot.
Of course a robot would perform the job unflappably, it is emotionless by design. I'm pretty sure it would go right ahead and murder the patient unflappably as well. The robot "keeping its cool" is not even a question.

That said, this does sound very impressive, even if I think there's some pretty crazy risks involved. Hopefully they have more respect for the problem then self-driving car companies.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago (5 children)

So are we fully abandoning reason based robots?

Is the future gonna just be things that guess but just keep getting better at guessing?

I’m disappointed in the future.

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