11/10/2025
I don’t cook using a timer. I might have when I first learned to cook; reading recipes carefully and using their vague ranges of “10-20 minutes on high” nonsense. Now, I see cooking as a fully attentive, involved and enjoyable thing. I want to feel, touch, taste, smell along the way. I also want to use a sprinkle, and a handful, a dollop – like how most of y’all treat sp*ed limit signs, my measuring cups/spoons are just a suggestion. I’m no chef, by any stretch, but my friends who do it for a living will agree, the magic that can happen in a kitchen cannot be done by simply being a recipe robot.
I was recently asked this scary question: “Dr Kirk, do you think your job is safe when AI (Artificial Intelligence) hits?” My answer remains “yes.” Let’s be honest, COVID revealed many things about our society. Businesses learned quickly, what jobs needed someone in person, what can be done at the house, remotely or even flat out eliminated. Fat was trimmed (as we quarantined and got fatter, ironically). Heck, some businesses got rid of a physical office building, forevermore. This time also forced businesses to look hard at jobs and see what can be done algorithmically by a computer and not need a human at all! And that Pandora’s box that was opened lit a fire that blazes all around you as we speak – what can be automated? Kiosks. Self-checkouts. Scan this. Swipe that. Can we make a recipe that a computer can follow? You know, the computer that doesn’t need sleep or p*e breaks. Doesn’t need vacation. Doesn’t need to pick up the kids. Isn’t having a “bad morning” because Becky in shipping thinks she cute. Is your profession safe? Y’all, I heard a student say “all we do is worksheets and computer assignments, why do we need Ms. So-and-so (the teacher)?” Scary, right?
I can tell you, medicine is SOMEWHAT safe. The practice of medicine is just that – a practicing art. Several ways to skin a cat. And the unique snowflake that God made you doesn’t know how to follow a recipe. Not to pick a fight, but ESPECIALLY you women. Medicine does have some algorithmic/recipe tendencies and can be used as a guideline, but trust me: when the 50 year old woman in the ER with only diarrhea is having a heart attack, you learn quickly it ain’t always “elephant sitting on chest with pain radiating down the left arm” like the cookbook said! A robot woulda gave her Pepto and sent her home to die. Look, I’m not saying we will always get it right. Mistakes and misdiagnoses happen. But I pledge to never set the timer and walk away. Imma stand right by your biscuits so they ain’t got burnt bottoms, you follow me? My charge to you is this: are you working like following a recipe? Setting the timer and walking away? What human element are you pouring into your job? What part of your soul goes in that a robot could never replace? Before a computer comes along, you better throw in a dollop of you and show that God-given gift that cannot be automated.
Yours in Health and Christ, Dr. Kirk
