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AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

explainthispaper.com

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Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#181

Post by naasking »

fao_ wrote: post #155
naasking wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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. The same is true of "species". Last I checked, there were at least 24 different definitions of "species", all of which have some overlap and none of which are perfectly precise. You don't see people going a…

You're so, so close to getting it. And then you decide to just hop over the point :(

See my other reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28527329

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#182

Post by janderson215 »

phkahler wrote: post #97
sillyquiet wrote: post #28

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…

>> an engineer I worked with had a father in dentistry and told me my kid had "German teeth in an Irish mouth"

Off topic, but this sounds very engineery, indeed. Was the conversation polite?

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#183

Post by naasking »

burkaman wrote: post #174
naasking wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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. The same is true of "species". Last I checked, there were at least 24 different definitions of "species", all of which have some overlap and none of which are perfectly precise. You don't see people going a…

A modern definition of "species" generally gives a set of objective criteria that you can use to determine if two organisms are the same species (such as "can they produce fertile offspring"). Is there any definition of race like this? Genuine question, I don't think I've ever seen a definition of race more specific than "a collection of people with similar physical characteristics" or something like that, and I can'…

The imprecise definition of "species" is exactly what I was describing. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_concept

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#184

Post by screye »

esyir wrote: post #153
packetlost wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 strongly dislike (almost despise) this argument. Race is a surrogate variable for genetic history. The classification itself indeed matches with reality, as it is generally made on ancestry. Approximation it may be, imperfect it may be, construct it may be, but its utility is very much real. Attempts to handwave it away do not change the fact that race and genetics are very much linked as it is used today.

> The classification itself indeed matches with reality, as it is generally made on ancestry.

I would dispute that claim.

Due to population bottlenecks among the first 'out_of_africa' groups, a black passing south indian is genetically a lot closer to a white as milk finnish person than various african subpopulations are to each other. (Africans are orders of magntitude more diverse than the rest of the world, in a genetically quantifiable way)

Race markers like latin american and hispanic betray the fact that some countries (argentina, chile) are almost entirely white, others are have denisovan dna (natives) or are racial frankenstien's monsters due to slave trade (Brazil). It makes no sense to use these umbrella race denominations.

Race as an overloaded term for sociological, antropological, genetic and medical use is stupid. It just becomes a terrible tool for each. Genetics has smartly stopped using race much, but the others still continue to do so, despite the inconveniences it brings.

There is utility to race , only because we refuse to cut the middle man and identify clusters directly from genetic data. No one needs a cockerel to wake you up, when alarm clocks have been invented. Honestly, typing this comment has just made me want to invest in these 23nme-like companies.

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#185

Post by jcun4128 »

packetlost wrote: post #105
phkahler wrote: post #97

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…

random side note: glasses for example, bought RayBans my nose bridge isn't the right shape for it sucks

could be genetic I suppose but I wasn't aware of this as a thing eg. Asian fit sunglasses

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#186

Post by mig39 »

andreyk wrote: post #156
throwaway894345 wrote: post #14

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…

From what I understand, the definition of a social construct is a bit nuanced, and it's possible to both believe race is a social construct and that it correlates with things. As a metaphor, let's say we create two categories in the world for all people - tallers (people above six feet in height) and shorters (people below six feet in height). Human height objectively exists, but these categories are social construct…

Thanks for the great explanation. The height analogy made it click for me.

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#187

Post by oh_sigh »

andreyk wrote: post #156
throwaway894345 wrote: post #14

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…

From what I understand, the definition of a social construct is a bit nuanced, and it's possible to both believe race is a social construct and that it correlates with things. As a metaphor, let's say we create two categories in the world for all people - tallers (people above six feet in height) and shorters (people below six feet in height). Human height objectively exists, but these categories are social construct…

But with the taller/shorter, you would commonly have two tallers producing a shorter, or two shorters producing a taller. If we were talking about husbandry, we would say that tallers and shorters don't "breed true".

But with race, you never have two white people produce a black person, or vice versa (and no, a black person with albinism is not a white person).

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#188

Post by pessimizer »

roflc0ptic wrote: post #22
ceejayoz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be both real physiological differences and a social construct, as "what level of bone density tips you from x to y" becomes a question, as does "is an x person with calcium deficiency actually a y person" sort of things that are obviously not the case.

As someone with a scientific bent who is of the left, I always find it incredibly frustrating when people say “x is a social construct”, because it’s technically true, but also utterly elides the dual nature of the category. Race is a social construct that can be used to infer true things (probabilities) about the real world! Other social constructs that have this property: sociology, economics, physics… This isn’t t…

You can't say anything about someone's bone density by deciding that they are black. Averaging the bone density of everyone that you've defined as black might be predictive of distributions of the bone densities of large numbers of people you've defined as black.

But it's just because of the metrics you've chosen. If you started defining race by bone density, and ignored ahistorical half-biblical half-mystical 19th-century human taxonomies, you might find that their classifications aren't interesting or useful for most things. If you controlled for effects that are affected by differential social treatment (like diet and upbringing), you might find most of your metrics are ghosts.

The process of sorting people into boxes for differential treatment based on their qualities affects their qualities.

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#189

Post by packetlost »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #109
packetlost wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

I didn't make any comments on the utility of racial classification, just that the classification isn't perfect, leaves groups out, and where you decide to draw the lines between them is often arbitrary. Race is an oversimplification of a complex system, but even an oversimplification has value.

Seems like you have a pretty good grasp on my assertion here.

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#190

Post by b9a2cab5 »

the_third_wave wrote: post #102
throwaway894345 wrote: post #14

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 beha…

> Racism - judging people by the colour of their skin - has been on life support for a long time

You would think so, but the proliferation of affirmative action among tech companies and prestigious universities says otherwise.

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