JAMA+ AI Conversations

In this episode, Roy Perlis, MD, MSc, and technology journalist Kevin Roose explore how rapidly changing AI is reshaping writing, medicine, and expectations for scientific discovery. They revisit Roose's famous 2023 encounter with Microsoft's Sydney chatbot and consider whether health care may ultimately be better served by AI systems that operate with less human oversight. Related Content:

• A Technology Journalist Looks at AI and Health

Launching in 2027, JAMA AI will be the newest journal from the JAMA Network. JAMA AI Editor Roy H. Perlis, MD, MSc, and Associate Editor Yulin Hswen, ScD, MPH, discuss the details of this new journal, which opens for submissions in early 2027, as well as some recent AI publications across the JAMA Network that provide insight into articles the editors are hoping to publish. Related Content:

• Announcing JAMA AI—A New Journal From the JAMA Network
• Acoustic Analysis of Primary Care Patient–Clinician Conversations to Screen for Cognitive Impairment
• An AI-Based OCT System to Detect Diabetic Macular Edema
• The Machine Is Just as Loud

In this episode of JAMA+ AI Conversations, Roy Perlis, MD, MSc, and Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and former CDC Director, discuss the potential for AI deployment in health care to adversely impact women physicians, and why simply avoiding these technologies is not a realistic response. Related Content:

• Will Women Physicians Face an AI Gap?
• Women, Medicine, and AI

Yulin Hswen, ScD, MPH, Associate Editor of JAMA+ AI, speaks with Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) Program Manager Bon Ku, MD, MPP, about rethinking AI in health care from alarm fatigue and aviation-style simulation to patient-centered design and what it will take to safely move AI from promising models to real-world care. Related Content:

• Beyond the AI Alarm

Related Link:

• Bon Ku's Bio

In this episode of JAMA+ AI Conversations, Roy Perlis, MD, MSc, and Eric Topol, MD, move from the science of aging to how to think about AI-enabled medicine. Topol discusses what it will take for AI to move medicine from reactive to predictive, why some well-validated imaging AI remains underused while large language models have spread rapidly, and whether AI is actually giving clinicians more time with patients. Related Content:

• From Aging to AI and Beyond

In this episode of JAMA+ AI Conversations, Roy Perlis, MD, MSc, and Haider Warraich, MD, sort out the prospects for AI-driven heart failure care that doesn't entail a human in the loop. Warraich is a program manager at ARPA-H, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, responsible for ADVOCATE, an effort to support the development of AI to guide heart failure treatment, seeking to create AI agents that can pass muster with the FDA. Related Content:

• ADVOCATing for Patients With Heart Failure
• FDA Perspective on the Regulation of Artificial Intelligence in Health Care and Biomedicine

In this episode of JAMA+ AI Conversations, Roy Perlis, MD, MSc, and Joseph Geraci, PhD, of Queen's University discuss using machine learning to analyze clinical trials and related FDA interactions. Geraci's work focuses on identifying subpopulations with different responses to help plan and analyze future trials. Related Content:

• Enriching Clinical Trials With Machine Learning

Interview with Joseph T. Colonel, PhD, author Acoustic Analysis of Primary Care Patient–Clinician Conversations to Screen for Cognitive Impairment. Hosted by Cynthia E. Armand, MD. Related Content:

• Acoustic Analysis of Primary Care Patient–Clinician Conversations to Screen for Cognitive Impairment

The rise in use and function of ambient AI scribes is arguably one of the fastest technologic changes ever seen in health care. In this episode of Healthy Dialogue, host Derek Angus, MD, MPH, is joined by Vincent Liu, MD, MS, Chief Data Officer of The Permanente Medical Group in Kaiser Permanente, to discuss the rapidly changing world of ambient AI. Related Content:

• Ambient AI Scribes and the Quintuple Aim
• Changes in Clinician Time Expenditure and Visit Quantity With Adoption of Artificial Intelligence–Powered Scribes
• AI Scribes Are Here, but Is Health Care Ready?

In this episode of JAMA+ AI Conversations, Roy Perlis, MD, MSc, and Yulin Hswen, ScD, MPH, discuss Anthropic's participation in the Vatican presentation of Pope Leo XIV's AI encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas. The conversation explores AI ethics, interpretability, governance, AI safety, and the growing role of health care, public health, and global institutions in shaping the future of AI. Related Content:

• From Silicon Valley to the Vatican—The Expanding Debate on AI Ethics

Is it enough for AI to be accurate, or are we mistaking performance for impact? Does AI change clinician behavior, improve patient decisions, or simply create a convincing performance of intelligence? Yun Liu, PhD, research scientist at Google Research, speaks with JAMA+ AI Associate Editor Yulin Hswen, ScD, MPH, about what is behind the curtain in these AI systems. Related Content:

• The Wizard of Oz in Medical AI

Every patient has a story, but in modern health care that story is buried across thousands of notes, lab results, and fragmented records. Nigam H. Shah, MBBS, PhD, of Stanford University Department of Medicine joins JAMA Associate Editor Yulin Hswen, ScD, MPH, to explore how researchers are building AI systems that can read and understand a patient's full medical history in seconds. Related Content:

• Chatting With AI and the Electronic Health Record

Join JAMA+ AI Associate Editor Yulin Hswen, ScD, MPH, for a conversation about the practical implementation of trustworthy clinical AI. Guests Emily Tat, MD, and Peter Brodeur, MD, discuss ARISE, a research network focused on the real-world effects of AI on clinical care. Related Content:

• Designing Trustworthy Clinical AI

As artificial intelligence increasingly shapes population health decisions, evidence and accuracy matter. In this episode of JAMA+ AI Conversations, Associate Editor Yulin Hswen, ScD, MPH, speaks with Sandro Galea, MD, MPH, DrPH, Editor of JAMA Health Forum, about how AI is entering health policy, when it is ready for use, and what rigorous, policy-focused AI research is most needed. Related Content:

• AI at the Policy Table

Why can signals that appear consistent across many studies still reflect shared bias; how do sibling comparisons help recalibrate cumulative evidence; and what AI-enabled approaches can add to large-scale evidence integration? Viktor H. Ahlqvist, PhD, from the Karolinska Institute joins JAMA and JAMA+ AI Associate Editor Yulin Hswen, ScD, MPH, to discuss why automated drug safety surveillance during pregnancy is urgently needed and how AI and computation can strengthen or undermine causal inference. Related Content:

• AI Drug Safety in Pregnancy

How might AI amplify epidemiological insight into neurodegenerative and systemic disease? JAMA+ AI Associate Editor Yulin Hswen, ScD, MPH, speaks with Fang Fang, MD, PhD, professor at Karolinska Institutet and head of the Integrative Epidemiology group. Drawing on Fang Fang's work in ALS, Parkinson disease, dementia, energy metabolism, immune modulation, and gut microbiome interactions, their conversation probes how AI methods might help map disease trajectories, identify prognostic markers, and ultimately support precision prevention and translational research, while preserving scientific rigor and interpretability. Related Content:

• AI and the Epidemiology of Complex Disease

What are the safety, evidence standards, and transparency needed for AI chatbots used in mental health contexts, particularly for young people. John Torous, MD, MBI, JAMA Psychiatry Author Interviews podcast host, joins JAMA+ AI Associate Editor Yulin Hswen, ScD, to discuss risks, data protections, and the clinical safeguards required to ensure responsible use. Related Content:

• AI Chatbots and Youth Mental Health

Dr Robert Wachter, chair of the Department of Medicine at UC San Francisco, speaks with JAMA+ AI Editor in Chief Roy Perlis about his new book, "A Giant Leap." Their discussion addresses multiple potential impacts of AI in medicine in terms of clinical practice but also training the next generation of clinicians. Related Content:

• Leaping Forward Into…What?—An Interview With Robert M. Wachter

In this episode, JAMA+ AI Associate Editor Yulin Hswen, ScD, MPH, speaks with David Wu, MD, PhD, and Adam Rodman, MD, MPH, about what safe clinical use of LLMs requires. Drawing on the framework of Do No Harm, they examine failure modes, limits of accuracy-based evaluation, clinician AI interaction, and safeguards needed as medical AI moves into patient care. Related Content:

• From AI Bench to AI Bedside

In this episode of JAMA+ AI Conversations, Editor in Chief Roy Perlis and Associate Editor Yulin Hswen debate recent articles highlighted in JAMA+ AI, including work on patient messaging and suicide screening, plus a call for more critical thinking in medicine. Related Content:

• Stumbling Toward AI in the Clinic