For 24 consecutive years, nurses have topped Gallup's most-trusted profession list—and for good reason. We are the ones who care for you, advocate for you, and tell you the truth. The same cannot be said for those who criticize our union for opposing Palantir, the AI data company that has become a flashpoint in the debate over artificial intelligence in healthcare.
Palantir's track record is hardly a secret: it assists federal agencies in targeting immigrants for deportation, supports the Israeli military in operations that have killed Palestinians in Gaza, and helps hospital employers analyze vast troves of medical data to maximize profits. Yet defenders of AI often paint it as a benign, even benevolent, force—an outlook that ignores the reality on the ground.
Those who champion AI in healthcare rarely have hands-on experience. They are not bedside nurses, longshoremen, or civil servants. They have never faced the daily pressures of caring for patients with insufficient staff and resources. When you talk to the people who actually keep the country running, you hear a consistent theme: AI is deployed to benefit the corporation's bottom line, not to help workers do their jobs. In hospitals, AI has been used to displace nurses, dangerously understaff shifts, deny care, and maximize billing—not to save lives.
Consider Montefiore Hospital in New York City, where management laid off 12 veteran registered nurses in July. These nurses reviewed patient charts and handled insurance disputes. Their work was handed over to an AI-powered software program. Or look at HCA Hospitals, the nation's largest for-profit chain, where nurses are forced to use Timpani, a Palantir scheduling app. Timpani has wreaked havoc on staffing calendars, routinely failing to schedule enough experienced nurses for the severity and volume of patients.
Nearly half of U.S. hospitals use EPIC, the electronic health record platform that recently integrated ChatGPT. Nurses have documented systemic, unresolved problems with EPIC, and they fear that feeding sensitive patient data into ChatGPT is both a privacy violation and a safety hazard. The companies behind these tools tout features like automated end-of-shift handoff reports, which eliminate the need for nurses to talk to each other. But any seasoned RN knows that a verbal update can be the difference between life and death.
We are not Luddites. Nurses embrace technology that genuinely improves patient care. But we draw a hard line at unproven, unregulated systems that prioritize profit margins over safety. AI companies are using patients and nurses as guinea pigs, and we refuse to accept that. Trust nurses, not AI.
