Sorry, Musk: autonomous surgery is decades away, not three years

Elon Musk recently claimed that in three years, there will be more expert surgical robots than surgeons on the earth. The statement generated considerable excitement, speculation, and outrage in equal measure. While medicine is a deeply personal enterprise, it is also rooted in science.

The fundamental challenge in surgery is not precision but adaptability. Surgery in a young child is vastly different from an elderly person even when the pathology and procedure are the same. This fact is further confounded by previous treatment, underlying health issues, and variations in anatomy and physiology.