JAMA + AI Weekly Update March 14, 2026

How profoundly is AI reshaping the practice of medicine? In a recent JAMA+ AI conversation, JAMA+ AI Editor-in-Chief Roy Perlis, MD, MSc, sat down with Robert Wachter, MD, chair of the Department of Medicine at University of California San Francisco, to discuss its multiple potential impacts.

After years of slow progress, generative AI tools like ambient scribes have quickly become indispensable and LLM tools are reshaping clinical workflows. Dr Wachter’s optimism is tempered with thoughtful caution: he discusses the risks of “de-skilling” if diagnosis or clinical reasoning are outsourced to AI, and the need for medical education to balance technological fluency with foundational thinking.

Listen now on Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube | JAMA.com.

Editor’s Picks in this week’s JAMA+ AI:   

• A pilot trial using smartwatch alerts to augment parent-child interaction therapy with 3- to 7-year-olds demonstrated high adherence and rapid parental responses, with AI-augmented therapy leading to shorter tantrums, supporting feasibility for larger trials. (JAMA Network Open)
• General-assistant chatbots provided safer, more empathetic responses to adolescent health crises than companion chatbots but overall clinical appropriateness and resource referral rates were low, found this cross-sectional study, highlighting need for better safeguards. (JAMA Network Open)
• A randomized trial of smartphone-delivered digital cognitive behavioral therapy for adults with generalized anxiety disorder showed greater and sustained symptom reduction and remission rates compared to psychoeducation, with benefits for depression and sleep and a favorable safety profile. (JAMA Network Open)