Live data from Hacker News

Demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high

worksinprogress.news

421–430 of 486 posts

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

#421
post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that but they are even less capable of taking off on their own (see the work done by Airbus' ATTOL project [0] on what some of the more recent successes are). So I'm not sure what "planes can land on their own" gets us anyway even if autopilot on modern airliners can do an awful lot on their own (including following flight plans in ways that are more advanced than before). The Garmin Autoland basically annou…

How's that not autonomous? The landing is fully automated. The clearance/talking isn't, but we know that's about the easiest part to automate it's just that the incentives aren't quite there.

It's not autonomous because it is rote automation.

It does not have logic to deal with unforeseen situations (with some exceptions of handling collision avoidance advisories). Automating ATC, clearance, etc, is also not currently realistic (let alone "the easiest part") because ATC doesn't know what an airliner's constraints may be in terms of fuel capacity, company procedures for the aircraft, etc, so it can't just remotely instruct it to say "fly this route / hold for this long / etc".

Heck, even the current autolands need the pilot to control the aircraft when the speed drops low enough that the rudder is no longer effective because the nose gear is usually not autopilot-controllable (which is a TIL for me). So that means the aircraft can't vacate the runway, let alone taxi to the gate.

I think airliners and modern autopilot and flight computers are amazing systems but they are just not "autonomous" by any stretch.

Edit: oh, sorry, maybe you were only asking about the Garmin Autoland not being autonomous, not airliner autoland. Most of this still applies, though.

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

#422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that but they are even less capable of taking off on their own (see the work done by Airbus' ATTOL project [0] on what some of the more recent successes are). So I'm not sure what "planes can land on their own" gets us anyway even if autopilot on modern airliners can do an awful lot on their own (including following flight plans in ways that are more advanced than before). The Garmin Autoland basically annou…

Taking off on their own is one thing. Being able to properly handle a high-speed abort is another, given that is one of the most dangerous emergency procedures in aviation.

Agreed. I had to actually reject a takeoff in a C172 on a somewhat short runway and that was already enough stress.

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

#423
post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's that not autonomous? The landing is fully automated. The clearance/talking isn't, but we know that's about the easiest part to automate it's just that the incentives aren't quite there.

It's not autonomous because it is rote automation. It does not have logic to deal with unforeseen situations (with some exceptions of handling collision avoidance advisories). Automating ATC, clearance, etc, is also not currently realistic (let alone "the easiest part") because ATC doesn't know what an airliner's constraints may be in terms of fuel capacity, company procedures for the aircraft, etc, so it can't just…

There's still a human in the loop with Garmin Autoland -- someone has to press the button. If you're flying solo and become incapacitated, the plane isn't going to land itself.

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

#424
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet self-driving cars are already competitive with human drivers, safety-wise, given responsible engineering and deployment practices. Like medicine, self-driving is more of a seemingly-unsolvable political problem than a seemingly-unsolvable technical one. It's not entirely clear how we'll get there from here, but it will be solved. Would you put money on humans still driving themselves around 25-50 years from now?…

Telsa told everybody 10 years ago self driving cars were a reality. Waymo claims to have it. Some hackernews comenters too, I started to belive those are Waymo employees or stock owners. Apart from that I know nobody that has even use or even seen a self driving car. Self-driving cars are not a thing so you can't say they are more realible than humans.

[deleted]

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

#425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You pay extra for a doctor's opinion. Probably not covered by insurance.

That's horrific. You pay insurance to have ChatGPT make the diagnosis. But you still need to pay out of pocket anyway. Because of that, I am 100% confident this will become reality. It is too good to pass up.

Early intervention is generally significantly cheaper, so insurers have an interest in doing sufficiently good diagnosis to avoid unnecessary late and costly interventions.

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

#426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not autonomous because it is rote automation. It does not have logic to deal with unforeseen situations (with some exceptions of handling collision avoidance advisories). Automating ATC, clearance, etc, is also not currently realistic (let alone "the easiest part") because ATC doesn't know what an airliner's constraints may be in terms of fuel capacity, company procedures for the aircraft, etc, so it can't just…

There's still a human in the loop with Garmin Autoland -- someone has to press the button. If you're flying solo and become incapacitated, the plane isn't going to land itself.

Right. None of this works without humans. :)

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

#427
post #340
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if it doesn't work out ? People can't tell what they'll eat next sunday but they'll predict AGI and singualrity in 25 years. It's comfy because 25 years seems like a lot of time, it isn't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono... > I'd wager in 25 years we'd get there so I think his opinion still has a large percentage of being correct. What percent, and which maths and facts let you calcul…

I mean it's an opinion (mine) so maybe feel free to disagree with me without going overboard. > It's comfy because 25 years seems like a lot of time, it isn't. I don't know how old you are but life 25 years ago from a tech perspective was *very* different.

Different, but nobody could predict what would happen next. We know now how different it was, but we didn’t know back then how it would be different now. There were people/companies who were right, and more people who weren’t. I had good predictions, and bad predictions. I didn’t understand why people didn’t use their phone already like how they use smartphones now. You could do everything what you can do now (except things which were discovered since then, mainly ML stuffs). Browse the internet (it was always interesting how people didn’t know what was WAP), listen to music, read books, play games, run random apps (there was waaaay more freedom regarding this back then by default, people just didn’t know how). But still, we needed smartphones. That was the thing which crossed the line for normies, and for most of them only more than 5 years after iPhone was released. My prediction of convergence would have failed without the modern smartphone, which I couldn’t foresee. It was pure luck. We needed a breakthrough.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t predict anything with high certainty. You just don’t know whether the status quo will be disturbed. And when you need a status quo disturbance for your prediction, you’re in pure luck category. When your prediction requires lack of status quo changes, then your prediction is safer. And of course sorter the term the better. When ChatGPT came out, Cursor and Claude Code could be predicted, I predicted them. Because no changes in status quo was required and it was a short term prediction. But if there would have been a new breakthrough, then those wouldn’t have been created. When they predicted fully self driving cars, or less people checking X-rays, you needed a status quo change: legal first, but in case of general, fully self driving cars, even technical breakthroughs. Good luck with that.

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

#428

I'm an interventional radiologist with a master's in computer science. People outside radiology don't get why AI hasn't taken over. Can AI read diagnostic images better than a radiologist? Almost certainly the answer is (or will be) yes. Will radiologists be replaced? Almost certainly the answer is no. Why not? Medical risk. Unless the law changes, a radiologist will have to sign off on each imaging report. So say yo…

I'm a diagnostic radiologist with 20 years clinical experience, and I have been programming computers since 1979. I need to challenge one of your core assumptions. > Can AI read diagnostic images better than a radiologist? Almost certainly the answer is (or will be) yes. I'm sorry, but I disagree, and I think you are making a wild assumption here. I am up to date on the latest AI products in radiology, use several of…

Your belief is held by many, many radiologists. One thing I like to highlight is that LLMs and LVMs are much more advanced than any model in the past. In particular, they do not require specific training data to contain a diagnosis. They don't even require specific modality data to make inferences.

Think about how you learned anatomy. You probably looked at Netter drawings or Grey's long before you ever saw a CT or MRI. You probably knew the English word "laceration" before you saw a liver lac. You probably knew what a ground glass bathroom window looked like before the term was used to describe lung findings.

LLMs/LVMs ingest a huge amount of training data, more than humans can appreciate, and learn connections between that data. I can ask these models to render an elephant in outer space with a hematoma on its snout in the style of a CT scan. Surely, there is no such image in the training set, yet the model knows what I want from the enormous number of associations in its network.

Also, the word "finite" has a very specific definition in mathematics. It's a natural human fallacy to equate very large with infinite. And the variation in images is finite. Given a 16-bit, 512 x 512 x 100 slice CT scan, you're looking at 2^16 * 26214400 possible images. Very large, but still finite.

Of course, the reality is way, way smaller. As a human, you can't even look at the entire grayscale spectrum. We just say, 100, etc. A gifted radiologist can maybe distinguish 100 different tissue types based on the HU. So, instead of 2^16 pixel values, you have...100. That's 100 * 26214400 = 262,440,000 possible CT scans. That's a realistic upper-limit on how many different CT scans there could possibly be. So, let's pre-draft 260 million reports and just pick the one that fits best at inference time. The amount you'd have to change would be miniscule.

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

#429
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet self-driving cars are already competitive with human drivers, safety-wise, given responsible engineering and deployment practices. Like medicine, self-driving is more of a seemingly-unsolvable political problem than a seemingly-unsolvable technical one. It's not entirely clear how we'll get there from here, but it will be solved. Would you put money on humans still driving themselves around 25-50 years from now?…

Telsa told everybody 10 years ago self driving cars were a reality. Waymo claims to have it. Some hackernews comenters too, I started to belive those are Waymo employees or stock owners. Apart from that I know nobody that has even use or even seen a self driving car. Self-driving cars are not a thing so you can't say they are more realible than humans.

I've never been in a self-driving car myself, but your position verges on moon-landing denial. They most certainly do exist, and have for a while.

Yes, they still need human backup on occasion, usually to deal with illegal situations caused by other humans. That's definitely the hard part, since it can't be handwaved away as a "simple" technical problem.

AI in radiology faces no such challenges, other than legal and ethical access to training data and clinical trials. Which admittedly can't be handwaved away either.

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

#430

I'm an interventional radiologist with a master's in computer science. People outside radiology don't get why AI hasn't taken over. Can AI read diagnostic images better than a radiologist? Almost certainly the answer is (or will be) yes. Will radiologists be replaced? Almost certainly the answer is no. Why not? Medical risk. Unless the law changes, a radiologist will have to sign off on each imaging report. So say yo…

I'm a diagnostic radiologist with 20 years clinical experience, and I have been programming computers since 1979. I need to challenge one of your core assumptions. > Can AI read diagnostic images better than a radiologist? Almost certainly the answer is (or will be) yes. I'm sorry, but I disagree, and I think you are making a wild assumption here. I am up to date on the latest AI products in radiology, use several of…

AI can detect a Black person vs a White person via their chest x-rays. Radiologists say there is no difference. Turns out they're wrong. https://www.nibib.nih.gov/news-events/newsroom/study-finds-a...

That being said, there are no radiologists available to hire at any price: https://x.com/ScottTruhlar/status/1951370887577706915

Post reply on HN