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The Listener Will See You Now

Ambient AI now records the conversation at the hospital bed and the exam table. The microphone is optional, for the moment. The receptionist slid a tablet across the counter and asked, in the bright tone reserved for upgrades, whether I would consent to let the clinic “AI Listen” to the appointment. Percy and Lotty, The Boles Brits, were already complaining inside their carrier, due for the rabies shots the state requires. The pitch was efficiency. The software would listen to my conversation with the veterinarian, transcribe it, and “ambient scribe” the care notes so the doctor could spend less time typing and more time with the animals. I declined. There was a checkbox for that, which I noted with the small relief of a man who has read the next paragraph before signing the first.

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Still Eating Your Patients

Seventeen years ago I asked whether every veterinarian should be required to be a vegetarian. The question has sharpened since then. The right word now is vegan, because the line between dairy cow and veal calf is no longer plausibly deniable, and because the climate science on animal agriculture has overrun the old fence between eggs and the slaughterhouse. The provocation in 2009 was short, almost a snapshot of a paradox. A profession that swears to relieve animal suffering, going home from the clinic and ordering bacon. The post received twelve comments, a few sympathetic, a few cautious, and then it slept on the page while the world kept slaughtering animals at industrial scale. The question never left me.

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