In the last few weeks I have written about the Engage conference I attended.

I didn’t expect to leave a conference on women’s economic security thinking about artificial intelligence, but there I was, reading a slide titled Top 5 Reasons I’m Excited About AI in Healthcare. The presenter framed it as a Letterman countdown. Here’s what was on the list:

Number 5: AI turns mountains of data into something actionable, connecting the dots across charts, notes, and lab results that no single human could hold in their head at once.

Number 4: AI can scale equity in clinical trials by identifying patients who truly represent the clinical population, not just, as the slide wryly noted, “average males named Steve.”

Number 3: Increased access for all. Micro-clinics and telehealth reaching rural communities, the places that traditional healthcare infrastructure has consistently underserved.

Number 2: Truly personalized care, from reproductive health to menopause to chronic conditions, tailored to each patient’s actual story.

Number 1: Freeing up healthcare providers to focus on actual patient care, by taking the paperwork off their plates.

Every single item on that list was about closing a gap, whether it be a gap in access, in representation, in personalization, in time. These are the same gaps that have existed in healthcare for decades, often at the greatest cost to women, to underserved communities, and to the many people who don’t fall into the typical patient that is researched.

The question isn’t whether AI is coming to healthcare. It already has. The question is who gets to shape what it’s optimizing for.

That’s a conversation worth having. And from what I heard at Engage, there are some very smart people already asking it. And it’s not just about healthcare, it spans all industries.

Holly Page, who was kind enough to invite me to the conference, puts it plainly: the lack of responsible articulation about where we’re headed in healthcare, in technology, and in space is one of the great failures of our current public conversation. It’s part of why she and Kevin Cirilli are building Meet the Future to make the case for what actually matters, clearly and without the noise. If that resonates with you, it’s worth following.