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Google AI has access to huge haul of NHS patient data

newscientist.com

21–30 of 83 posts

Re: Google AI has access to huge haul of NHS patient data

#21
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

dang ( https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dang ) can make it happen, unsure how to signal him but perhaps he searches his own mentions

emailed him. don't care massively, but the Vice piece is just a shallow re-write and it doesn't even link to us ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yes. Url changed from http://motherboard.vice.com/read/uk-hospitals-are-feeding-16....

Re: Google AI has access to huge haul of NHS patient data

#22
post #7

Terrible reporting. Improving health outcomes by AI analysis of patient data is a much bigger prize - morally and commercially - than anything which could be achieved through ad targeting. Google is far too smart to squander such an opportunity by abusing patients' trust.

It so happens Google has the perfect means at its disposal for de-anonymizing large swaths of such data: trillions of user location records, calendar appointments, emails, and texts. It's not too hard to put all that together to match a specific encounter record, for example.

Re: Google AI has access to huge haul of NHS patient data

#23
post #20
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it did not. google own deepmind DeepMind IS Google. Asserting that it isn't doesn't magically make them a separate legal entity. > restrictions on data usage I really don't care what the restrictions are today . The data exists under Google's control. > i don't expect you to know Arrogant insults are not a useful form of rhetoric. I read the actual agreement, and while it wasn't anywhere as detailed as I would have…

> DeepMind IS Google. Asserting that it isn't doesn't magically make them a separate legal entity. in the context of this data, yes, there is significant distinction between the two. > Arrogant insults are not a useful form of rhetoric. sorry, i'm not trying to be arrogant. > You may trust Google, but trust isn't transitive. true. > You're projecting your own situation on others. For someone with HIV (which is one of…

> a corp has no incentive in using my data in the same way a government has ala dragnet surveilence,

Did you miss the disclosures about that surveillance over the last few years, which indicate that governments are taking data from from those corporate databases? With programs like (but not limited to) Prism, giving data to a corporation may effectively be the same giving it to governments.

> anyone at deepmind were to do

You need to consider a threat model that includes more than that one group. What about everyone else at Google, or anybody with access to Google's internal networks, etc. Security is a process that has to be applied at all layers.

Re: Google AI has access to huge haul of NHS patient data

#24
I think this situation nicely juxtaposes positive externality with private rights.

As an individual, you may wish to hoard all of your personal medical information. Doing so may provide marginal benefit or protection against some theoretical harms. However, much of medical science relies on large population studies. Is knee surgery worth it? Are breast exams? Do COX-2 inhibitors increase heart attacks? Enormous amounts of good could be done by having large datasets of entire patient histories available for analysis by all, assuming they could not be de-anonymized (if not, then the datasets have to be analyzed under contracts)

Whenever I visit the doctor and I am given a form asking if my data can be sent to some group to participate in a study, I always answer yes. Never once have I had any negative repercussions from doing so, and it is my hope that the data was used to publish scientific papers that added to net knowledge of humanity. However, I have to wonder if asking me for permission actually interferes with random sampling. Are people who give permission vs people who refuse statistically more likely to have other behaviors that may influence the results?

Re: Google AI has access to huge haul of NHS patient data

#26
post #19
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The data "got to" Google when it was sent to Google DeepMind. it did not. google own deepmind, but the restrictions on data usage are pretty tight. > I expect a HN to understand how this is usually impossible. Correlating data may seem hard to the layman, but Google is experience at data analysis. yes, but then again, i don't expect you to know what data it is that deepmind are working with, and what their primary…

> it did not. google own deepmind DeepMind IS Google. Asserting that it isn't doesn't magically make them a separate legal entity. > restrictions on data usage I really don't care what the restrictions are today . The data exists under Google's control. > i don't expect you to know Arrogant insults are not a useful form of rhetoric. I read the actual agreement, and while it wasn't anywhere as detailed as I would have…

"DeepMind IS Google. Asserting that it isn't doesn't magically make them a separate legal entity. " Errr, they are a separate legal entity, so, i'm not sure what you are talking about.

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/07386350

Re: Google AI has access to huge haul of NHS patient data

#27
post #25

As an expert in machine learning, I don't see how someone would expect this to work. Actually to predict a disease, you need true positives and true negatives. If you only had access to the true positive data, it would be a lot harder to predict accurately.

Can you explain what you mean a little more? It seems like by having complete medical records, there would be a great deal you could infer statistically.

Do you mean that it's not sufficient to have a medical record that doesn't indicate knee issues? That you would need a medical record that confirms there are no knee issues?

Re: Google AI has access to huge haul of NHS patient data

#29
post #11
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> will get to google The data "got to" Google when it was sent to Google DeepMind. > anonymised I expect a HN to understand how this is usually impossible. Correlating data may seem hard to the layman, but Google is experience at data analysis. Arguing that Google's AI division - who are trying to find subtle correlations in the medical data - somehow cannot correlate those same records back to their "personally iden…

> The data "got to" Google when it was sent to Google DeepMind. it did not. google own deepmind, but the restrictions on data usage are pretty tight. > I expect a HN to understand how this is usually impossible. Correlating data may seem hard to the layman, but Google is experience at data analysis. yes, but then again, i don't expect you to know what data it is that deepmind are working with, and what their primary…

>oh please. i trust google far more than my own government for data protection; we're talking about an orginisation who leaves sensitive literally just lying around

We're talking about a corporation that had employees access personal data to show off to teenagers[0].

No one can be trusted with data, therefore it needs to be restricted to only those who need access. The NHS probably needs data about patients, Google does not and the unspecified third-party contractor Google has employed to store the data definitely does not.

[0] http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/14/google-engineer-spying-fire...

Re: Google AI has access to huge haul of NHS patient data

#30

I think this situation nicely juxtaposes positive externality with private rights. As an individual, you may wish to hoard all of your personal medical information. Doing so may provide marginal benefit or protection against some theoretical harms. However, much of medical science relies on large population studies. Is knee surgery worth it? Are breast exams? Do COX-2 inhibitors increase heart attacks? Enormous amoun…

> assuming they could not be de-anonymized

That's where the problem is anonymizing data is really difficult and it takes only a few bits of info to associate that data with a name. It takes only 3 pieces of information to uniquely identify 87% of people, Zip code, birthday, and sex.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/09/your-secrets-live...

http://dataprivacylab.org/projects/identifiability/paper1.pd...

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