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AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

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Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#101
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The genetic differences between different people in Africa are far greater than the genetic differences between black and white people in North America. The term "race" as used to describe belonging to a different groups which generally experience their lives vastly differently to other groups is thus inherently social. The hypothesis goes as follows - if black and white people are so similar to each other biological…

Differences between African groups being bigger than between blacks and whites in NA don't make the rough categorization no longer work. For example, there's rather little genetic variety within dogs, or between dogs and wolves, but that doesn't say much about how impactful the variation is: Chihuahuas and Huskies are genetically really similar to each other, but no one in their right minds would disagree that you ca…

The following article has a detailed explanation of why the analogy with dog breeds is not a good one:

https://evolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.118...

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#102

Please forgive me for asking a controversial question (particularly so early in the morning), but if there are all of these biological correlations with race, what does it mean that “race is a social construct”? Is the idea that black people have greater bone mineral density (per TFA) due to social or environmental causes (e.g., diet)? For what it’s worth, I’m a staunch egalitarian and I don’t see that changing eithe…

Racism - judging people by the colour of their skin - has been on life support for a long time [1] in most liberal republics/democracies but nefarious actors are attempting to revive it in the name of identity politics. It is this type of race which can be detected using X-rays. The same group tends to support the doctrine of cultural relativism [2]. Claiming all cultures are equally valid they call criticism of behaviour related to specific cultural traits "racism", mangling the definition of that term in the process. Cultures, by definition, are social constructs.

Cultural relativism is not the norm and should not become such since there are differences between cultural traits where it is possible to state that some are objectively better than others. As an example, the cultural trait of genital mutilation is objectively worse than that of leaving girls' bits alone - and I'm open to stating the same about boys even though that would raise up a storm of protest. The cultural trait of parents marrying off their offspring without said offspring having a say in the matter is objectively worse than than that of having the offspring decide for themselves who they want to share their life with. The cultural trait of having people who achieved success within the bounds of the law - whether those be inventors, writers, athletes, successful farmers, builders or architects or anything else - is objectively better than that of having successful criminals and hoodlums as role models - yes, "street culture" with gang bangers as role models is objectively worse than whatever name can be given to cultures which have/had those inventors (etc) as role models.

X-rays can not be used to detect whether you might mutilate your newborn's genitals, marry off your 5yo daughter to your 20yo nephew or leave your children to be raised by the local street gang leaders since these traits do not depend on the colour of your skin even though there is often a correlation; correlation does not imply causation [3]. Take for example Michael Skråmo [4], a Swedish-Norwegian man who very much looked the part of such but ended up as a recruiter for islamic state in the Nordic countries. Contrast him to e.g. Luai Ahmed, a Yemeni refugee who lives in Sweden and is a vocal critic of everything Skråmo stood for. It was not Skråmo's white skin and blonde hair which made him ready to pick up a Kalashnikov, it is not Ahmed's brown skin and black hair which made him averse to the negative cultural traits related to islam.

MLK was right when he longed for a society where people would be judged on the content of their character and we were well on our way of achieving that goal. Unfortunately there are those who derive their identity - and income - from their purported position as fighters against racism (without scare quotes), a fight which was nearing its conclusion. While most old soldiers fade away [5] some have taken it upon themselves to revive their old enemy so as to keep their purpose - and income - alive. Their culture is not mine and I consider it to be objectively worse than, e.g. MLK's. If you then consider that MLK was a "black" man while I am of north-west European descent and as such have "white" skin the truth becomes clear, it is not the colour of our skin which makes us alike - it is the content of our character.

Race is not a social construct. Culture is. Nature is not a social constrict, Nurture is.

[1] https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/11/racism-america-histor...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_relativism

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_cau...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Skr%C3%A5mo

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_soldiers_never_die

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#103

Please forgive me for asking a controversial question (particularly so early in the morning), but if there are all of these biological correlations with race, what does it mean that “race is a social construct”? Is the idea that black people have greater bone mineral density (per TFA) due to social or environmental causes (e.g., diet)? For what it’s worth, I’m a staunch egalitarian and I don’t see that changing eithe…

IMO it's because it's very dubious the AI is doing what the paper is maintaining it's doing. People are not 'race x' or 'race y' biologically, as if race is some discrete set of features common to a whole population. Every individual has a set of biological features inherited from their ancestors which, theoretically, could include any or all so-called 'races'. Human beings have a continuum of features that is heavil…

Aliens may as well sort us by the colour of our pants as soon as the colour of our skin, but let's not pretend that such an obvious visual variation as skin tone would be overlooked.

White cat, tabby cat, grey cat, etc? We don't try to say one sort of cat is better than other, but we can tell them apart very well.

Maybe what you're saying is that the aliens would not have the same prejudices associated with that marker as we have.

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd warm up to that concept if the article was: "We don't know what in the hell is going on here. Here's our source code and data set of x-rays and race. What do you think?" It could be that in the realm of machine learning, most of what is going on is people turning random knobs on a big machine and getting mysterious results. It's the birth of science without understanding.

That's precisely what the researchers are saying. In the underlying paper, they conclude that "this capability is extremely difficult to isolate or mitigate", call for "further investigation and research into the human-hidden but model-decipherable information", and suggest medical imaging people should "consider the use of deep learning models with extreme caution" until future research produces a better understandi…

[deleted]

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it's because it's very dubious the AI is doing what the paper is maintaining it's doing. People are not 'race x' or 'race y' biologically, as if race is some discrete set of features common to a whole population. Every individual has a set of biological features inherited from their ancestors which, theoretically, could include any or all so-called 'races'. Human beings have a continuum of features that is heavil…

>> People are not 'race x' or 'race y' biologically, as if race is some discrete set of features common to a whole population. Clearly people are biologically different based on race and the AI here is picking up on that. My kids orthodontist even told me they align teeth in part based on race. The Asian arch is flatter across the front for example. I asked about this because an engineer I worked with had a father in…

I think you're missing the point. "Race" is an attempt to put people with different biological traits into 'buckets' but in reality there's variation, overlap, and blurry lines that make any sort of classification a social approximation at best.

No one is going to argue that you get your traits from your ancestors and that regional groups have similar traits due to shared ancestry, it's the classification itself that doesn't match up well with reality.

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it's because it's very dubious the AI is doing what the paper is maintaining it's doing. People are not 'race x' or 'race y' biologically, as if race is some discrete set of features common to a whole population. Every individual has a set of biological features inherited from their ancestors which, theoretically, could include any or all so-called 'races'. Human beings have a continuum of features that is heavil…

>> People are not 'race x' or 'race y' biologically, as if race is some discrete set of features common to a whole population. Clearly people are biologically different based on race and the AI here is picking up on that. My kids orthodontist even told me they align teeth in part based on race. The Asian arch is flatter across the front for example. I asked about this because an engineer I worked with had a father in…

> Clearly people are biologically different based on race and the AI here is picking up on that

I think the parent is saying that it's possible (likely even) that the AI isn't picking up on biological features, but some other artifact. For example, perhaps the quality of x-ray machines or technicians correlate with race (race and "access to higher quality radiology" both correlate with wealth) and the AI is really picking up on the quality of the imaging. The fact that the AI still worked when the imaging quality was reduced across the board (pixelated into 8x8 squares) suggests that this particular hypothesis is unlikely, but this is the kind of error we're discussing.

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#107

Please forgive me for asking a controversial question (particularly so early in the morning), but if there are all of these biological correlations with race, what does it mean that “race is a social construct”? Is the idea that black people have greater bone mineral density (per TFA) due to social or environmental causes (e.g., diet)? For what it’s worth, I’m a staunch egalitarian and I don’t see that changing eithe…

How race is a social construct: it was imposed as an idea for reasons that were not connected to physiological fact (although often claiming the contrary at the time, the claims were the same kind of made up BS as phrenology, another idea from the same time period). There are biological correlations with inherited genetic lineage. That only has weak correlation with assigned race. Lots of different lineages of people…

[deleted]

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it's because it's very dubious the AI is doing what the paper is maintaining it's doing. People are not 'race x' or 'race y' biologically, as if race is some discrete set of features common to a whole population. Every individual has a set of biological features inherited from their ancestors which, theoretically, could include any or all so-called 'races'. Human beings have a continuum of features that is heavil…

Aliens may as well sort us by the colour of our pants as soon as the colour of our skin, but let's not pretend that such an obvious visual variation as skin tone would be overlooked. White cat, tabby cat, grey cat, etc? We don't try to say one sort of cat is better than other, but we can tell them apart very well. Maybe what you're saying is that the aliens would not have the same prejudices associated with that mark…

No, I am saying that skin tone would not be as important a feature.

For example, lining up those dead bodies by skin tone alone would have Central Africans mixed in with South Americans, Austronesians, and South Asians, Northern Europeans mixed in with East Asians and Inuit, Southern Europeans mixed in with Indians,Central Asians, Native Americans, and Arabs, etc etc.

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> People are not 'race x' or 'race y' biologically, as if race is some discrete set of features common to a whole population. Clearly people are biologically different based on race and the AI here is picking up on that. My kids orthodontist even told me they align teeth in part based on race. The Asian arch is flatter across the front for example. I asked about this because an engineer I worked with had a father in…

I think you're missing the point. "Race" is an attempt to put people with different biological traits into 'buckets' but in reality there's variation, overlap, and blurry lines that make any sort of classification a social approximation at best. No one is going to argue that you get your traits from your ancestors and that regional groups have similar traits due to shared ancestry, it's the classification itself that…

I agree, but is it accurate to say that our concept of race amounts to labeling different clusters in an N-dimensional space (where the dimensions are largely biological traits)? I.e., while labeling clusters always entails some amount of approximation (clusters are inherently nebulous), we still label clusters because it's useful. For example, the boundaries between languages are imprecise, but we still bin/label them because it's useful to do so--is it roughly the same with race? Or is race categorically different for some reason that I'm not understanding?

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd warm up to that concept if the article was: "We don't know what in the hell is going on here. Here's our source code and data set of x-rays and race. What do you think?" It could be that in the realm of machine learning, most of what is going on is people turning random knobs on a big machine and getting mysterious results. It's the birth of science without understanding.

That's precisely what the researchers are saying. In the underlying paper, they conclude that "this capability is extremely difficult to isolate or mitigate", call for "further investigation and research into the human-hidden but model-decipherable information", and suggest medical imaging people should "consider the use of deep learning models with extreme caution" until future research produces a better understandi…

They always call for 'further investigation'.

Looking at this: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2107.10356.pdf

My general impression (no more than that) is a whole bunch of people crowding into a paper. The paper is mostly applying trivial image processing functions and seeing how some software they don't understand is responding. The main aim is pearl-clutching about 'bias' rather than any kind of understanding. God knows what they're going to do when any medical exam includes some kind of deep dive into the patient's genetics.

No surprises. It's the nature of the era.

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