Why DPC Docs Will Still Be Important Even With AI Trying to Take Over

With the avalanche of AI hitting every aspect of our lives, I still think human interaction may be more important than ever before.

I remember doing a dermatology rotation in medical school and the dermatologist telling us NOT to spend time with patients and NOT to get much of a history. He just wanted us to look at the skin and make a decision. It blew me away and bothered me, well, to this day. The fact that he was seeing 70-80 patients a day and raking in cash was irritating enough, but the fact that he hated the human interaction piece made me realize that field was not for me.

Joe Pulizzi is a very successful marketing guy who is at the end of his career and now ponders life. He puts out a nice newsletter, and here are some quotes from his latest one:

The simple truth is this: slowly, we are spending less and less time with people (even if there are people around us). Then, we reach a certain age where we are alone…and then many without meaning or purpose.

Most discussions about AI focus on jobs and productivity. But Frankl’s (Viktor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning) work suggests that the deeper danger is not economic. It is existential. The question is not only what happens when machines do our work, but what happens when fewer and fewer people actually need us.

What if we live in a world where no one needs us for anything at all?

A world of infinite content and synthetic companionship risks creating a population that is constantly stimulated but quietly unnecessary. You can be surrounded by output and still feel irrelevant. You can be seen by systems and yet not be required by anyone. 

Frankl observed that despair often emerges when a person can no longer answer the simple question, “Who needs me?” In a society where that question becomes harder to answer, we are not just facing a meaning crisis. We may be facing a social and even demographic one as well.

This is not just a psychological framework. It is also a strategic one. In a world where machines can scale output and automate efficiency, the scarcest asset becomes human relationship. The creator, entrepreneur, or leader who is deeply known by a small group and genuinely useful to them might be protected not only from technological disruption, but from the quiet erosion of purpose.

Maybe jobs were never the true source of meaning. They were simply one of its most common delivery systems. As AI begins to absorb more of those systems, meaning does not disappear, but it does stop being automatic. It becomes something that must be intentionally built through relationships where we are both known and needed. The real risk of a synthetic world is not that machines become more capable. It is that we forget that being necessary to one another is what makes life feel worth living.

I believe that Direct Primary Care doctors are going to fill that “scarcest asset.” AI cannot replace the relationships we have with our patients. Even if AI can give patients a path to their diagnosis, they will still need real PHYSICIANS to help them, care for them, guide them, and be there for them. That is what patients truly need, and this gives us our source of meaning. These relationships, as well as serving others, make life worth living.

So, in summary, f%ck AI.

Bring it on. DPC doctors (not all doctors) will make AI work for them and not the other way around.