AI Recognises Race in Medical Images • Hacker News Board

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#231

Post by mcguire » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 6:03 PM UTC

esyir wrote: post #208

screye wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 g…

>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. There's a reason for this, and that reason is cost. Even the relatively cheap microarray based tests that 23 & me uses are exp…

Does anyone really believe that medical logistics is the most common or most impactful use of "race"?

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#232

Post by mcguire » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

padastra wrote: post #171

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…

Blue is a color. Yellow is a color. The fact that green exists doesn’t mean those colors aren't real.

The differences between blue, yellow, and green are pretty minor compared to radio or gamma radiation.

No, I don't know what the point of this comment is. But I'm not sure I understand the point of the parent comment either.

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#233

Post by awild » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

JamesBarney wrote: post #209

andreyk wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So if you were going to create a test for "Is this a social construct?" What would it be? It seems like the definition from your comment would be "Could we take this labeling system, and define different labels or the labels differently?" I watched some of the youtube, and in the thought experiment she proposes she take a continuous trait(height) and arbitrarily splits it into two buckets. And talks about how this is…

> Maybe these things are social constructs, but if they are then we surely must come to the conclusion that almost everything we care about in the world is a social construct.

That's the point really. And it's not inherently a value judgement to say something is a social construct. Using it as a value judgment usually is meant to convey that some secondary attributes are not inherent, or even more so, just historical by-products and might need rethinking or recontextualisation. Being a woman and being of the female sex might seem to be identical, but womanhood is not the same as having a certain genomic makeup, and therefore womanhood is obviously a social construct. The video above even outlines how female-Ness might be considered a social construct but I'm not smart enough to explain that to you where abigail will do it much better.

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#234

Post by KittenInABox » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

mig39 wrote: post #186

andreyk wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One of the other things to point out is that race doesn't correlate all that well with genetics in humans. People who would be described as black have so much genetic diversity that there can be no reasonable argument that there's a genetic basis for their racial label. Certain health conditions or biological differences often have to make far more specific categories than race.

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#235

Post by mcguire » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

benjaminjackman wrote: post #113

btbuildem wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Supposing there are Aliens FWIW I don’t know that they would perceive the same visible spectrum that we do, which might effect their ability to differentiate by color. And they might not even perceive colors at all perhaps focusing on patterns or perhaps use some sort acoustical sonar system of high pitched shrieks or an electrocapacitive perception captured by elongated dactyltennae hands with which they can sense t…

"But I take higher ground. I hold that, in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by colour, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding states between the two is, instead of an evil, a good — a positive good," John c. Calhoun said.

"Nonsense," replied the thistleglorb. "You both have exactly the same capacitance."

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#236

Post by mcguire » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

herbstein wrote: post #204

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. 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 heavily interlaced amongst all the 'races'. Exactly. One of the people I'll always point to as ev…

One does wonder how the AI would do by the 1/16th legal definition.

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#237

Post by mcguire » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 6:17 PM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #39

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…

> Human beings have a continuum of features that is heavily interlaced amongst all the 'races'. That doesn't mean race doesn't exist any more than the fact that height is a continuum doesn't mean that short people and tall people don't exist.

Does it? I'm 6'5" (196cm in Roman Catholic[1]); in Amsterdam I'm at the upper range of normal while in many other places I am Godzilla and have to watch my step to avoid crushing things.

[1] A humorous reference. Sorry.

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#238

Post by drdeca » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 6:18 PM UTC

michaelscott wrote: post #143

benjaminjackman wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supposing there are Aliens FWIW I don’t know that they would perceive the same visible spectrum that we do, which might effect their ability to differentiate by color. And they might not even perceive colors at all perhaps focusing on patterns or perhaps use some sort acoustical sonar system of high pitched shrieks or an electrocapacitive perception captured by elongated dactyltennae hands with which they can sense t…

The alien is hypothetical, a proxy point of view that's theoretically unbiased and has no awareness of human social context, history, etc.

Sure, but aren’t they just extending that to remove the “bias” of human-sensory-organs ? :P

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#239

Post by mcguire » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 6:24 PM UTC

foldr wrote: post #132

throwaway894345 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You've apparently asked a very interesting question, judging by the volume of replies! Agreed, and upvotes too! It seems like I've struck upon something people have been interested in talking about. > The other replies here are mostly good, but I'd also like to note that "race is a social construct" refers to how "races" aren't really objective categories (What defines if somebody is "white"?) and more of a subject…

>some extreme (though mainstream and influential) people take "gender is a social construct" to mean that literally all differences between the sexes are socially constructed including height, weight, strength, etc (otherwise known as "blank slatism"). Could you give a reference to someone who actually says this?

Perhaps those arguing against the idea that "gender is a social construct"?

Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

#240

Post by tpm » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

zepto wrote: post #217

tpm wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More often than not, AI/ML finds some surprising shortcut. I am pretty sure this will be the case too, because "races" and their (hypothetical) biological or genetic foundations don't map at all.

I would like to agree with that, since I would like to believe race is a construct that we can dispense with at some point. That said, assuming the paper is just wrong is simply bias. If there is an identity associated with race, there is no reason to think it doesn’t impact biology. There is no reason to assume it’s genetic.

Well if race has biological basis and also if race is inherited, there is no way around a genetic basis. Also there is a more than hundred year history of scientific research and no genetic (or other) grounding for race has been found. So yes, that is the source of my bias.