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Demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high

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Re: Demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high

#181
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at Waymo, not Robotaxi. Waymo is essentially the self driving vision I had as a kid, and ridership is growing exponentially as they expand. It's also very safe if you believe their statistics[0]. I think there's a saying about overestimating stuff in the short term and underestimating stuff in the long term that seems to apply here, though the radiologist narrative was definitely wrong. [0] https://waymo.com/saf…

Even though the gulf between Waymo and the next runner up is huge, it too isn't quite ready for primetime IMO. Waymos still suffer from erratic behavior at pickup/dropoff, around pedestrians, badly marked roads and generally jam on the brakes at the first sign of any ambiguity. As much as I appreciate the safety-first approach (table stakes really, they'd get their license pulled if they ever caused a fatality) I am…

> Waymos still suffer from erratic behavior at pickup/dropoff, around pedestrians, badly marked roads and generally jam on the brakes at the first sign of any ambiguity.

As do most of the ridesharing drivers I interact with nowadays, sadly.

The difference is that Waymo has a trajectory that is getting better while human rideshare drivers have a trajectory that is getting worse.

Re: Demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high

#182

When Tesla demoed (via video) self-driving in 2016 with a claim "The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself" and then when they unveiled Semi in 2017 - I tweeted out and honestly thought that trucking industry is changed forever and it doesn't make sense to be starting in trucking industry. It's almost end of 2025 and either nothing out of it o…

Meanwhile, it’s my feeling that technology is moving insanely fast but people are just impatient. You move the bar and the expectations move with it. I think part of the problem is that the market rewards execs who set expectations beyond reality. If the market was better at rewarding outcomes not promises, you’d see more reasonable product pitches.

How have expectations moved on self driving cars? Yes, we're finally getting there, but adoption is still tiny relative to the population and the cars that work best (Waymo) are still humongously expensive + not available for consumer purchase.

Re: Demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high

#183
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why you write 2021? It clearly says 2016. I mean if you change the data to fit your argument you will always make it look correct. Lets assume we stop in 2016 like he said, where do we get the 1000 radiologist the US needs a year?

> the training lasts 5 years. At the end of their training the year is 2021 The training lasts 5 years, 2021 - 5 = 2016 If they stopped accepting people into the radiologist program but let people already in to finish, then you would stop having new radiologist in 2021.

Residents are working doctors, so we’d start losing useful work the year we stop taking new residents.

Re: Demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's limited to a few specific markets though. My bet is they aren't going to be able to roll it out widely easily. Probably need to do years of tests in each location to figure out the nuances of the places.

Yeah, I have no idea if Waymo will ever be a rural thing honestly, mostly for economic reasons. I'm skeptical it would get serious suburban usage this decade too. But for major cities where less than 80% of people own cars, test time doesn't seem to be making a difference. They've been expanding in Austin and Atlanta, seemingly with less prep time than Phoenix and San Fran.

They keep expanding in places where it doesn't snow.

They've got testing facilities in Detroit ( https://mcity.umich.edu/what-we-do/mcity-test-facility/ ) ... but I want to see it work while it is snowing or after it has snowed in the upper midwest.

https://youtu.be/YvcfpO1k1fc?si=hONzbMEv22jvTLFS - has suggestions that they're starting testing.

If AI driving only works in California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas... that's not terribly useful for the rest of the country.

Re: Demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high

#185

When Tesla demoed (via video) self-driving in 2016 with a claim "The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself" and then when they unveiled Semi in 2017 - I tweeted out and honestly thought that trucking industry is changed forever and it doesn't make sense to be starting in trucking industry. It's almost end of 2025 and either nothing out of it o…

It's almost end of 2025 and either nothing out of it or just a small part of it panned out.

The truck part seems closer than the car part.

There are several driverless semis running between Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio every day. Fully driverless. No human in the cab at all.

Though, trucking is an easier to solve problem since the routes are known, the roads are wide, and in the event of a closure, someone can navigate the detour remotely.

Re: Demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high

#186

When Tesla demoed (via video) self-driving in 2016 with a claim "The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself" and then when they unveiled Semi in 2017 - I tweeted out and honestly thought that trucking industry is changed forever and it doesn't make sense to be starting in trucking industry. It's almost end of 2025 and either nothing out of it o…

This is such a stereotypical SF / US based perspective.

Easy to forget the rest of the world does not and never has ticked this way.

Don't get me wrong, optimism and thinking of the future are great qualities we direly need in this world on the one hand.

On the other, you can't outsmart physics.

We've conquered the purely digital realm in the past 20 years.

We're already in the early years of the next phase were the digital will become ever more multi-modal and make more inroads into the physical world.

So many people bring an old mindset to a new context, where maring of errors, cost of mistakes or optimizing the last 20% of a process is just so vastly different than a bit of HTML, JS and backend infra.

Re: Demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high

#187
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Radiologists, here, mostly sit at home, read scan and dictate reports. They rarely talk to other doctors and talking to a patient is beyond them. They are some of the specialists with the best salary. With interventional radiologists and radio-oncologists it's different but were talking about radiologists here...

My wife’s an ER doctor and she talks to radiologists all the time. I also recently had surgery and the surgeon consulted with the radiologist that read my MRI before operating.

Then it's an organizational problem (or choice) in the specific hospital where my wife is treated/followed and I apologize to all radiologists that actually talk to peoples in a professional capacity!

Or maybe it's related to socialized Healthcare because in the article there is a breakdown of the time spent by a radiologists in Vancouver and talking to patients isn't part of it.

Re: Demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high

#188

When Tesla demoed (via video) self-driving in 2016 with a claim "The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself" and then when they unveiled Semi in 2017 - I tweeted out and honestly thought that trucking industry is changed forever and it doesn't make sense to be starting in trucking industry. It's almost end of 2025 and either nothing out of it o…

I realized long ago that full unattended self driving requires AGI. I think Elon finally figured that out. So now LLMs are going to evolve into AGI any moment. Um no. Tesla (and others) have effectively been working on AGI for 10 years with no luck

> I realized long ago that full unattended self driving requires AGI.

Not even close.

The vast majority of people have a small number of local routes completely memorized and do station keeping in between on the big freeways.

You can see this when signage changes on some local route and absolute chaos ensues until all the locals re-memorize the route.

Once Waymo has memorized all those local routes (admittedly a big task), it's done.

Re: Demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotes like this are informative as far as they go, but they don't say anything at all about the technique itself. Like your story about the fonts used for labeling, essentially all of the drawbacks cited by the article come down to inadequate or inappropriate training methods and data. Fix that, which will not be hard from a purely-technical standpoint, and you will indeed be able to replace radiologists. Sorry,…

When it weren't for the font it might be anomalies in the image taking or even in the encoder software. You can never really be sure, what exactly the ML is detecting.

Why not? That's what Grad-CAM is for right?

Re: Demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high

#190
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s your take on pharmacists? To my naive eyes, that seems like a certainty for replacement. What extra value does human judgement bring to their work?

I work on a kiosk (MedifriendRx) which, to some degree "replaces" pharmacists and pharmacy staff. The kiosk is placed inside of a clinic/hospital setting, and rather than driving to the pharmacy, you pick up your medications at the kiosk. Pharmacists are currently still very involved in the process, but it's not necessarily for any technical reason. For example, new prescriptions are (by most states' boards of pharma…

Pharmacists are not going to be replaced, their jobs like most other jobs touched by AI will evolve, possibly shrink in demand but won't completely dissapear. AI is a tool that some professional has to use after all.
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