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"AI will cure cancer" misunderstands both AI and medicine

rachel.fast.ai

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

#31

Post by CamelCaseName »

mlyle wrote: post #26
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 popul…

> 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.

Wow! That makes so much sense! I had never considered this!

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

#32

Post by b20000 »

i am puzzled why people think there is true intelligence in AI. IMHO it is advanced interpolation or morphing similar to the photo morphing tools of the 90s. if the data is not in the model you can’t get it out. you can only get interpolations out of it of data in the model. the more sophisticated the interpolation the more people think there is intelligence. maybe i am missing something but this is what i perceive.

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

#33

Post by ninetyninenine »

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…

Not all products trickle down to be used in egalitarian way.

When they do trickle down often it can happen as a monopoly technology where supply is controlled by a few powerful entities.

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

#34

Post by [deleted] »

b20000 wrote: post #32

i am puzzled why people think there is true intelligence in AI. IMHO it is advanced interpolation or morphing similar to the photo morphing tools of the 90s. if the data is not in the model you can’t get it out. you can only get interpolations out of it of data in the model. the more sophisticated the interpolation the more people think there is intelligence. maybe i am missing something but this is what i perceive.

[deleted]

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

#37

Post by samatman »

incangold wrote: post #13
incangold wrote: post #9

Sad to hear of Ilene Ruhoy’s experience here. She is a wonderful clinician who has enormously helped other patients with complex diagnostic paths and with diagnoses that are severely neglected.

I also share the author’s concerns. I keep coming back to the fact that if you asked even GPT 3 how to solve climate change, it would give you a perfectly good answer. We have this idea that AI will “solve climate change” at some point in the future. What we really mean is “give us a different answer to climate change that has zero cost”. Climate change is not currently being solved because of politics and existing s…

Climate change is easy to solve: build fusion reactors which are 50x cheaper per kW to deploy than solar. Deuterium is cheap, after all.

> Climate change is not currently being solved because of politics and existing systems, not because of a lack of intelligence.

It's a technical problem that's sociopolitical because we don't have a Pareto-improving technology to solve it with. Like 50x fusion reactors. Not a complete solution, but with it, the political will to shut down remaining emissions is easy to muster.

Some people think we'll have AIs soon for whom "design me a fusion reactor which is 50x cheaper per kW to deploy than solar" is the sort of input which gets the requested output. I am skeptical of this. But it isn't an incoherent thing to believe.

Where cancer is concerned the situation is much less clear.

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

#38

Post by Nowado »

mlyle wrote: post #26
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 popul…

There is even more fun aspect.

'Survival' for cancer tends to be defined as surviving 5 years. The earlier you catch, the more patient had left to live anyway.

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

#39

Post by pheewma »

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,…

There are also downstream consequences of ordering tests aside from cost; not all tests are harmless. As an example, regular screening for prostate cancer isn't recommended as much. Partially because it is often so slow-growing that people often die of other causes before the cancer even begins to cancer, and because the definitive test is a biopsy which is somewhat invasive. Rates of complications are relatively low, but it becomes a cost-benefit consideration (again, irrespective of cost) of if those risks are worth catching something that you may not even want to bother treating.

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

#40

Post by ToucanLoucan »

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!

There's a lot of media swirling around right now that's remarking upon the fact that the AI movement especially at it's most evangelical end strongly resembles what would otherwise be called a cult.

I don't think it's a coincidence we're seeing the largest numbers ever of people leaving organized religion at the same time we're seeing so many communities like the one that's grown around AI spring up that are essentially religion without the historical baggage.

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