A lot of the other jobs might be replaceble too like anesthetist, so in those instances each robot would talk to the next. Power outages - most hospitals have generator backups, and for long-term power issues they have contingency plans to close OR's except for emergent issues.

I think we're 40-70 years from complete AGI, meaning a robot that can do EVERYTHING you and I can do, has full human capabilities. Sometime before then we'll have lawyers, engineers, doctors and all labor/service jobs replaced by automation. (Or at least higher than 50% for every major industry).

I'm not saying I think surgery is simple, I can't do it I couldn't 'self-teach' it either like I did software. I respect the profession and time it takes to become a doctor.

I imagine surgery as having a checklist of things you go through. Sure there's instances when the plan fails but then you have at least a flow chart in your head of what next to do. The issue w/ (current ai) is it needs us to feed it steps to learn, it has to know all the possible scenarios. In an enclosed environment you can feed it more data and have a higher chance of success than in an open / unregulated environment like the great outdoors...

Imagine you took your surgery outside. Simply moving the table outside. How many new factors would that introduce? Foreign contaminants from bugs, bird shit, temperatures, wind, rain, snow.

You can account for maybe 80% or better of possible scenarios in the enclosed OR. Accounting for real world scenarios when there are millions of other people at play is nigh impossible. -- Even if you had an enclosed mall, and put the operating table in the middle of the walkway, some idiot eating a hamburger could trip and launch his burger into the patients' abdomen -- people is what you can't count for.

In the OR there's a handful of attendings/nurses/etc, but in the outside world there's millions depending on the city. I seriously hope going into a routine surgery that my chances of survival are better than driving through rush hour on Christmas eve with 14 inches of snow coming down all around me.

I know how to drive, I think it's simple, anyone can do it, but I don't trust anyone to do it. I am always looking at people for signs of trouble and correct myself to avoid them. I don't know how to do surgery, I couldn't possibly start. But my point from the start is it's not even science fiction it's been done. There have been fully un-manned robotic surgeries.

You act as if it's impossible when it's already been done. Probably with better success than self-driving cars even. I personally think it'll be 2030 before self-driving cars are street-safe if even then.