There's only one race. Ethnicity may vary.
AI Recognises Race in Medical Images
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Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images
#12There's only one race. Ethnicity may vary.
Any other 60-IQ takes to share?
Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images
#13There's only one race. Ethnicity may vary.
Unless you're the US government, then ethnicity refers to whether or not you're Hispanic, and race encompasses all other distinctions.
Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images
#14Please forgive me for asking a controversial question (particularly so early in the morning), but if there are all of these biological correlations with race, what does it mean that “race is a social construct”? Is the idea that black people have greater bone mineral density (per TFA) due to social or environmental causes (e.g., diet)? For what it’s worth, I’m a staunch egalitarian and I don’t see that changing either way.
EDIT: Really pleased with the largely constructive conversation in this thread. Was worried that this was going to be coopted as an ideological flame thread. Thanks for the insightful answers and good faith engagement. Keep up the good work!
Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images
#15Surprised that’s possible given the usual refrain about it being basically just melanin
Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images
#16I don't see why this is necessarily bad. An ML model is picking up on subtle anatomical or physiological differences between races. So what, that doesn't automatically mean the AI is racist or biased...
But it does mean that AI models trained on data might end up just perpetuating racial correlations even when you don't think it's aware of race. It's another example of why interpretability is important: the model might end up depending on correlations you don't mean it to.
Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images
#17Please forgive me for asking a controversial question (particularly so early in the morning), but if there are all of these biological correlations with race, what does it mean that “race is a social construct”? Is the idea that black people have greater bone mineral density (per TFA) due to social or environmental causes (e.g., diet)? For what it’s worth, I’m a staunch egalitarian and I don’t see that changing eithe…
It can be both real physiological differences and a social construct, as "what level of bone density tips you from x to y" becomes a question, as does "is an x person with calcium deficiency actually a y person" sort of things that are obviously not the case.
Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images
#18Please forgive me for asking a controversial question (particularly so early in the morning), but if there are all of these biological correlations with race, what does it mean that “race is a social construct”? Is the idea that black people have greater bone mineral density (per TFA) due to social or environmental causes (e.g., diet)? For what it’s worth, I’m a staunch egalitarian and I don’t see that changing eithe…
If you consider it from the perspective that race and culture are typically conflated into just race, then "race is a social construct" is fairly logical.
Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images
#19Please forgive me for asking a controversial question (particularly so early in the morning), but if there are all of these biological correlations with race, what does it mean that “race is a social construct”? Is the idea that black people have greater bone mineral density (per TFA) due to social or environmental causes (e.g., diet)? For what it’s worth, I’m a staunch egalitarian and I don’t see that changing eithe…
Yes, some anatomical differences are certainly affected by environment, but the quoted phrase is typically used in the context of treating races differently based on behavior ("X people are immoral", "Y people are stupid"). It's meant to encourage people to treat each other with equity and consider that such observed differences may be distorted by news, your like-minded cohorts, sociological conditions, etc, which are all theoretically addressable. But maybe I'm misunderstanding your question, since clearly the idea that races have anatomical differences is not contested by anybody - after all, anatomical difference is the very thing we base the word "race" on, colloquially. You don't need non-obvious differences to see that, since we already have obvious differences.
Re: AI Recognises Race in Medical Images
#20Please forgive me for asking a controversial question (particularly so early in the morning), but if there are all of these biological correlations with race, what does it mean that “race is a social construct”? Is the idea that black people have greater bone mineral density (per TFA) due to social or environmental causes (e.g., diet)? For what it’s worth, I’m a staunch egalitarian and I don’t see that changing eithe…
The differences exist on a spectrum and there’s no hard line between one or the other. Yes, as you mention, there are biological correlations. But at the edge cases, it’s quite subjective. How many races are there? Ask a different person and they’ll have a different list. Is Asian a race or is that ridiculously general? etc etc