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"AI will cure cancer" misunderstands both AI and medicine

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Re: "AI will cure cancer" misunderstands both AI and medicine

#21

Post by yashap »

I do think AI has a chance to make healthcare, for cancer and other diseases, a lot more proactive.

Even though we know prognosis is much better for cancer, and many other diseases, if you catch it early, we do essentially nothing to catch it early. My understanding is that this is because:

1. Administering regular MRIs, blood panels, etc. is expensive, in terms of the initial data collection

2. It’s also expensive, in terms of getting healthcare professionals to analyze the results

3. People often get the analysis wrong, in terms of both false negatives and false positives

4. False positives can lead to even more scans, analysis, etc., costing even more money

It does seem possible to me that specialized AI could get much better than humans at interpreting this data, doing it very cheaply (solving problem 2) with far fewer false negatives and false positives (solving 3 and 4). And it’s even possible that AI powered robotics gets great at collecting data in the first place, bringing down the cost of problem 1.

Basically, “AI invents cures for different types of cancer” seems like a moonshot, but “AI makes proactive medical scanning cheap and effective, thus greatly improving cancer outcomes” seems like a real possibility.

While we have some proactive screening for some types of cancer, the status quo for many types of cancer/patients is “wait until the cancer has spread enough that the patient is experiencing significant symptoms, with no systematic way to detect cancer early.” This is clearly not great. We’re accepting this for practical reasons today, but I do think AI has a significant chance to greatly improve the status quo here.

Re: "AI will cure cancer" misunderstands both AI and medicine

#24

Post by mlinhares »

skepticATX wrote: post #10

The predominate view of AI is that it is essentially magic. Which of course couldn’t be further from the truth. But I find these arguments much easier to understand if you look at it through that lens. Of course magic can cure cancer because… it’s magic!

Magic or god. I’m at a point that if I can replace AI with magic/god in a phrase I know it’s bullshit.

Re: "AI will cure cancer" misunderstands both AI and medicine

#25

Post by bugglebeetle »

realharo wrote: post #4

The article, while talking about some very real problems, seems to be completely unrelated to the question of whether or not AI is likely to have that capability in the near/mid future (which is what the title implies).

No, the article discusses how “AI” and other machine learning and algorithmic systems are used in practice - to surveil, dispossess, and harm those in whomever the powerful deem as out groups, and how this is done under the guise of idealist appeals about mass benefit, akin to “curing cancer.”

Re: "AI will cure cancer" misunderstands both AI and medicine

#26

Post by mlyle »

yashap wrote: post #21

I do think AI has a chance to make healthcare, for cancer and other diseases, a lot more proactive. Even though we know prognosis is much better for cancer, and many other diseases, if you catch it early, we do essentially nothing to catch it early. My understanding is that this is because: 1. Administering regular MRIs, blood panels, etc. is expensive, in terms of the initial data collection 2. It’s also expensive,…

> Even though we know prognosis is much better for cancer, and many other diseases, if you catch it early

This is, to some extent, misleading.

I mean, earlier treatment is beneficial, but there's a significant confound. All else being equal, if a cancer is less aggressive and slowly growing it is more likely to be detected early.

Put in other terms, the cancers detected earlier by screening are a very different population of cancers detected late and with progression.

Re: "AI will cure cancer" misunderstands both AI and medicine

#28

Post by supermatt »

frognumber wrote: post #19
patrickhogan1 wrote: post #3

Saying you'll cure cancer with AI without specifying the type of cancer is like declaring you'll solve crime with Batman. Way too broad to be useful, but makes a good headline.

I kind of feel like that's exactly why AI is helpful here: - Grab a cancer (or virus, bacteria, etc.) - Sequence it - AI will develop a custom therapy for that cancer In broad strokes, it's not hard to develop a therapy for any specific cancer or other disease in a specific individual. There are several broad strategies: - A targeted, custom phage to kill a bacteria (or extrapolate to killing a type of cells) - A cus…

I think this is you falling on the "misunderstands medicine" part of the equation.

Re: "AI will cure cancer" misunderstands both AI and medicine

#29

Post by bugglebeetle »

sxp wrote: post #5

Saying "AI will cure cancer" is like saying "science will cure cancer" or "doctors will cure cancer". In general, all three statements are true about technological progress. > Second, AI is used to disproportionately benefit the privileged while worsening inequality. That's bullshit. Computers and other gadgets always start out as toys of the rich, but they quickly trickle down to everyone else. Compare the multi-tho…

Technology is an amoral form of power that accrues to those who have access to it, as well as have the most access to it. In unequal societies, this accrual is to those who already have wealth, political power, etc. If the opposite was true, as you claim, the most technologically advanced countries would have seen decreasingly inequality in the period you fit. In reality, they’ve only seen the opposite.

Re: "AI will cure cancer" misunderstands both AI and medicine

#30

Post by ToValueFunfetti »

skepticATX wrote: post #10

The predominate view of AI is that it is essentially magic. Which of course couldn’t be further from the truth. But I find these arguments much easier to understand if you look at it through that lens. Of course magic can cure cancer because… it’s magic!

"AI will cure X" is equivalent to "Human intelligence will cure X", except that we expect AI to get there first because it's denser and can be replicated orders of magnitude more quickly and cheaply. You can levy a couple of counterpoints- that humans will never cure cancer either or that this kind of AI is impossible- but those are magical pessimism moreso than the alternative is magical optimism.
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