Part I — The problem Four sectors, one bottleneck Hospitals and health systems generate the raw material. Radiology is the most heavily regulated corner of medical AI anywhere: of the roughly 950 AI/ML-enabled devices the FDA had authorized by mid-2024, about 723 (around 76%) were radiology tools. Almost all are narrow and human-supervised, doing triage

What Top Performers Do Differently with AI—and Why They See the Biggest Benefits

Illustration by Jason Ford
Generative AI has produced two competing views about which workers will benefit most. One view is that AI will narrow performance gaps by giving lower performers templates, answers, and coaching directly in their workflow. The other is that AI will widen those gaps by eliminating routine but necessary work, which will allow top performers to spend more time on higher-value activities where they already have an advantage. At the individual task level, high and low performers may both benefit, but the more important question is which effect dominates on net in real jobs, where workers perform bundles of activities. The answer matters for how firms hire, train, organize teams, and adjust practices built for their current talent mix.
