Will AI Replace Physicians in the Near Future? AI Adoption Barriers in Medicine

This study aims to evaluate whether contemporary artificial intelligence (AI), including convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for medical imaging and large language models (LLMs) for language processing, could replace physicians in the near future and to identify the principal clinical, technical, and regulatory barriers.

A narrative review is conducted on the scientific literature addressing AI performance and reproducibility in medical imaging, LLM competence in medical knowledge assessment and patient communication, limitations in out-of-distribution generalization, absence of physical examination and sensory inputs, and current regulatory and legal frameworks, particularly within the European Union.