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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

#471

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 used to think that too. AI can already do better at screening mammography than a radiologist with a lower miss rate. Given that, insurance rates to cover AI should be even lower than for a radiologist, lawsuits will happen, but with a smaller number of missed cases the number should go down.

Paul Kedrosky had an interesting analogy when the automobile entered the scene. Teamsters (the men who drove teams of horses) benefited from rising salaries, even as new people declined to enter the "dead end" profession. We may well be seeing a similar phenomenon with Radiologists.

Finally, I'd like to point out that rising salaries mean there are greater incentives to find alternative solutions to this rising cost. Given the erratic political situation, I will not be surprised to see a relatively sudden transition to AI interpretation for at least a minority of cases.

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

#472
post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bad discovery probably means your exam will be read by someone qualified, like the surgeon/doctor tasked with correcting it. False negatives are far more problematic.

Ah, you're right. Something else I'm curious about with these systems is how they'll affect difficulty level. If AI handles the majority of easy cases, and radiologists are already at capacity, so they crack if the only cases they evaluate are now moderately to extraordinarily difficult?

Let's look at mammography, since that is one of the easier imaging exams to evaluate. Studies have shown that AI can successfully identify more than 50% of cases as "normal" that do not require a human to view the case. If group started using that, the number of interpreted cases would drop in half although twice as many would be normal. Generalizing to CT of the abdomen and pelvis and other studies, assuming AI can identify a sub population of normal scans that do not have to be seen by a radiologist, the volume of work will decline. However, the percentage of complicated cases will go up. Easy, normal cases will not be supplementing the Radiologist income the way it has in the past. Of course, all this depends upon who owns the AI identifying normal studies. Certainly, hospitals or even packs companies would love to own that and generate that income from interpreting the normal studies. AI software has been slow to be adopted, largely because cases still have to be seen by a radiologist, and the malpractice issue has not been resolved. Expect rapid changes in the field once malpractice solutions exist.

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

#473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless the law changes... That's it? I don't know. Doesn't sound like a very big obstacle to me. But I don't think AI will replace radiologists even if there was a law that said like, "blah blah blah, automated reports, can't be sued, blah blah." I personally think the consulting work they do is really valuable and very difficult to automate, we would be in an AGI world where radiologists get replaced, which seems…

> I don't know. Doesn't sound like a very big obstacle to me A lot of things are one law amendment away from happening and they aren’t happening. This could well become another mask mandate, which while being reasonable in itself, rubs people wrong way just enough to become a sacred issue.

I think you're right, and the source of the change of legislation may well be related to Medicare and Medicaid cost cutting. After all, it's difficult to see the federal government.

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

#474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide a reference? That's difficult to believe. Was this a diesel locomotive pulling a freight train or was it something smaller/lighter?

Not your correspondent, but trains are quite easy to derail, because they work by sliding orthogonality over the rail, and because otherwise there are way worse crashes. The cow might not have caused the fatalities directly, but derailment, and a fast train crashing unbound through the landscape has a lot of kinetic energy.

I decided to do a little searching myself, now that I'm at my PC. In 1984 there was 13 killed from derailment from hitting a cow, but that was a "push-pull" train and it wasn't the locomotive that hit the cow, but a much lighter "control car".[1] Another case where the train hit a cow and launched it through the air, and it struck and killed someone.[2]

Also, in [1] there weren't any cowcatchers on the train either. All the trains (besides possibly an old steam locomotive, IDR) that I've seen in my life have cowcatchers and also a locomotive in the lead.

[1] https://mx-schroeder.medium.com/unholy-cow-the-1984-polmont-... [2] https://morningsidekick.com/indian-man-killed-in-freak-train...

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

#476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FDA can clear whatever they want. A malpractice lawyer WILL sue and WILL win whenever an AI mistake slips through and no human was in the loop to fix the issue. It's the same way that we can save time and money if we just don't wash our hands when cooking food. Sure it's true. But someone WILL get sick and we WILL get in trouble for it

What's the difference in the lawsuit scenario if a doctor messes up? If the AI is the same or better error rate than a human, then insurance for it should be cheaper. If there's no regulatory blocks, then I don't see how it doesn't ultimately just become a cost comparison.

> What's the difference in the lawsuit scenario if a doctor messes up? If the AI is the same or better error rate than a human, then insurance for it should be cheaper

The doctor's malpractice insurance kicks in, but realistically you become uninsurable after that.

Same problem for any company.

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

#477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FDA can clear whatever they want. A malpractice lawyer WILL sue and WILL win whenever an AI mistake slips through and no human was in the loop to fix the issue. It's the same way that we can save time and money if we just don't wash our hands when cooking food. Sure it's true. But someone WILL get sick and we WILL get in trouble for it

yeah but at some point the technology will be sufficient and it will be cheaper to pay the rare $2 million malpractice suit then a team of $500,000/yr radiologists theres an MBA salivating over that presntation

It won't be because your insurance rate will go up.

Also $2M is absurdly absurdly low for a successful medical malpractice suit

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

#478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have settled out of court in every single case. None has gone to trial. This suggests that the company is afraid not only of the amount of damages that could be awarded by a jury, but also legal precedent that holds them or other manufacturers liable for injuries caused by FSD failures.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tesla-autopilot-crash-t... Tesla hit with $243 million in damages after jury finds its Autopilot feature contributed to fatal crash The verdict follows a three-week trial that threw a spotlight on how Tesla and CEO Elon Musk have marketed their driver-assistance software.

I stand corrected, thank you!

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

#479
post #427
post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I mean, yeah. That's why it's called an opinion.

You cannot predict whether you'll be alive tomorrow, you can be 99.99999% sure, but never 100%. The point is that based on certain information/data you can form a personal opinion, and someone can form a different one on the same data. My opinion is that AI is going to keep booming due to the enormous amount of private and government cash being injected into it with both pacifistic and militaristic application of said AI resulting in it being capable of successful interpretation of radiology imaging in 20 years.

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

#480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does ‘accuracy’ mean here?

To correctly assess the state of the world. Since Tesla exclusively uses visual sensors, they are massively limited in how accurate it can ever be… or safe. But hey, costs are lower that way.

‘Correctly’, like ‘accurately’ is with respect to some measure of correctness or accuracy. I’m not being merely pedantic here. A sea anemone assesses the state of the world just fine, but not with respect to driving.

Humans use mainly vision to drive, and what isn’t vision is also accessible for robots; mainly accelerations and sound.

So it doesn’t mean much to say that Tesla can’t be ‘accurate’ without describing what you want it to measure. What exactly to measure, and how well you need to do it is deep and key question for the technology.

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