Better than, or better with?

2 min read

Presentation

SASP Symposium 2026 · South African Society of Physiotherapy · 5 September 2026

Invited panel presentation

Overview

The second of two panel sessions for the South African Society of Physiotherapy’s 2026 Symposium, themed Taking Physiotherapy into the Future, and a direct follow-on from the previous day’s session on AI and the future of physiotherapy education.

The talk pushes back on the question that dominates every headline and hallway conversation about AI in healthcare — is it better than us? — as the wrong contest to be having. Treating capability as zero-sum means the goalposts move every time AI closes a gap, and the profession spends its energy defending the next “essential” human trait rather than deciding what actually matters. Working with a colleague who’s better than you at something isn’t diminishing, and the talk asks whether the discomfort of extending that same logic to AI is doing more work in the “keep the human in the loop” argument than patient benefit is.

The session covers:

  • Why capability comparison is a contest physiotherapy is going to lose, and why that’s the wrong frame regardless
  • The uncomfortable possibility that some human-in-the-loop requirements protect professional comfort rather than patients
  • Evidence that patients are already forming real relationships with AI outside the clinic, including alliance ratings from a 210-patient mental-health chatbot trial comparable to human therapy
  • Concrete ways to bring AI into the room: asking patients what AI has already told them, describing your own AI use openly, and treating non-use as a stance worth explaining rather than a neutral default

Slides

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