After EMS: Artificial Magnificence
This article is part of an ongoing series from Mike Rubin. In this series, he’ll reflect on his career and share practical retirement advice for emergency medical personnel. Catch up on articles you missed.
Did you see my Feb. 5, 2026 piece, “After EMS: The Best Parts,” on Facebook? I hope not. Whatever I wrote is much less entertaining than what Facebook posted right below it: an AI-generated entry, since deleted, called “Mike Rubin’s favorite hobbies.” According to Facebook and their bizarre embellishments to my bio, I am “the founder and CEO of Fanatics, a global digital sports platform.”
What a coincidence. My mother used to say, “Michael (she never called me Mike), if you can’t be a paramedic or a hockey player, invent one of those digital sports platforms and make it global.”
And so I did, apparently, but that’s only one of my extraordinary achievements per AI. I’m also “part-owner of the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team” and once had a stake in the National Hockey League’s New Jersey Devils. Are you impressed yet? Wait, there’s more: “Rubin has built several successful companies, including GSI Commerce, which he sold to eBay for $2.4 billion.”
That explains the extra billion dollars I found in my checking account. I thought I’d accidentally inserted six zeroes until the bank named a branch office after me with my own drive-up window.
I won’t deny I’m richer than all of you, so why bother with false humility? Let’s just celebrate my good fortune in spirit, if not in dollars and cents. You’re all invited to my house for dinner. We’ll take turns eating and sitting and talking. My turn will be longer than yours, so you might want to bring some tasty snacks and help with the dishes while you’re waiting for me to acknowledge you.
But seriously, lifesavers, who in the name of Baron Münchhausen is responsible for such nonsense? Is this state-of-the-art in social media: readers misled by absurd information about authors? Does anyone enjoy that?
I could try using AI to fact-check AI, but as Turk Sollozzo told Michael Corleone in The Godfather, I’m not that clever.
It takes years for journalists to build credibility. I’ve always thought that’s a good thing. Now I’m not sure it matters. When a publisher tells tall tales, then double-dog-dares readers to find what’s phony, everything becomes fake news until proven otherwise. Who has time for that? It takes me 30 minutes a day just to purge my inbox of dubious business opportunities from Arabian princes.
Nothing is more important than the truth. Anything called artificial is something less.
Mike’s Exit Poll #15: Have you ever knowingly lied to a patient about their health?
I’m going to say no, but I’ve come close.
I had a middle-aged male with an honest-to-gosh pulsatile abdominal mass—my only one in 30 years of EMS. I checked it more than once but resisted the urge to keep palpating.
The guy must have sensed our concern because he asked me something like, “How bad is this?” I told him the hospital would assess it further but didn’t mention how critical his condition might be. My partner started a line, and we rode in silence for most of the brief transport.
My patient, who was alert en route, didn’t make it to the OR. He died within minutes of arrival from a ruptured aortic aneurysm. I wondered whether I should have prepared him better for that. Not my job, I figured. I was wrong. In EMS, even when hope fades, credibility counts.
Mike Rubin is a retired paramedic and the author of Life Support, a collection of EMS stories. Contact Mike at mgr22@prodigy.net.
