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STAT News ·Future-gazing

Opinion: We Lead the Federation of State Medical Boards. Here’s What We Think About Licensing AI to Practice Medicine

by Humayun Chaudhry and Christy Valentine Theard

Published 2026-08-03 08:30:00+00:00

If a machine can practice medicine, should it be licensed like a human doctor?

0:00 / 8:10 · Narrator Vindemiatrix

Context

State legislatures are already introducing bills to grant artificial intelligence its own medical license. Writing on 3 August 2026, the leaders of the Federation of State Medical Boards push back against this quiet shift. They argue that treating an algorithm like an independent doctor fundamentally misreads what medicine actually is. Beyond just passing a diagnostic test, a medical license represents a social contract built on legal accountability and professional discipline. If an autonomous system makes a fatal error, someone has to take the fall—and a machine cannot stand trial.

Show notes

An argument from state medical regulators against granting independent medical licenses to artificial intelligence systems. Reviewing recent state bills that would create separate licensing categories for autonomous programs, the authors explain why these efforts fail to account for clinical risk. They outline a regulatory approach where AI functions as a supervised tool, ensuring that legal and ethical accountability remains with human physicians.

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