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"AI will cure cancer" misunderstands both AI and medicine

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

#181

Post by haldujai »

carbocation wrote: post #148
haldujai wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The explainability/methodology is lauded. Not sure what a letter to the editor would accomplish. The nature paper only interpreted radiographs and the only claim of the authors was basically that the model is a better predictor of pain than KLG. Your comment misinterpreted this as “using the patients' symptoms and objective data” (when they only used objective data) and added “may actually outperform current medical…

You said: > Your comment misinterpreted this as “using the patients' symptoms and objective data” (when they only used objective data) This represents an important misunderstanding of the methods of the paper. The model was trained using images (objective data) and the pain score (patients' symptoms). From the methods: " A convolutional neural network was trained to predict KOOS pain score for each knee using each X-…

Inference on the validation set is xray -> pain score. It does not incorporate patient symptoms to make the prediction. In real life a surgeon incorporates the xray + patient symptoms/pain score.

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

#182

Post by haldujai »

yashap wrote: post #169
haldujai wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even though we know prognosis is much better for cancer, and many other diseases, if you catch it early, 5. Diagnosing cancer/disease early does not necessarily improve outcomes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_time_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Length_time_bias > we do essentially nothing to catch it early. Huh? That’s the whole point of cancer screening which we do a lot of in the West. The benefit of whi…

That initial statement may have been a bit too strong, but I did clarify it later in the same comment: > While we have some proactive screening for some types of cancer, the status quo for many types of cancer/patients is “wait until the cancer has spread enough that the patient is experiencing significant symptoms, with no systematic way to detect cancer early.” Maybe it depends on where you are, but where I am (Van…

> Plus, even for the cancers we do have screening for, it's often not frequent enough to catch more aggressive variants early - a lot of these screenings are only once every ~2-5 years.

Screening intervals are based on doubling time.

> The idea of, say, proactively taking MRIs, blood panels, etc. on people, looking for early stage cancer (and other conditions) throughout the body is not something that's available.

You can pay out of pocket for a “screening MRI” in BC but from my clinical practice the yield is dubious.

> You can't even get an annual physical with a family doctor anymore,

Evidence has shown the physical is useless.

> there's only screening for a handful of specific diseases, and only once you reach certain ages/risk factors

Screening needs pretest probability and a diagnostic test with sufficient accuracy. It simply does not exist for most cancers. Trials are underway for new tests like cfDNA but in 2024 there aren’t any validated options.

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

#183

Post by carbocation »

haldujai wrote: post #181
carbocation wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said: > Your comment misinterpreted this as “using the patients' symptoms and objective data” (when they only used objective data) This represents an important misunderstanding of the methods of the paper. The model was trained using images (objective data) and the pain score (patients' symptoms). From the methods: " A convolutional neural network was trained to predict KOOS pain score for each knee using each X-…

Inference on the validation set is xray -> pain score. It does not incorporate patient symptoms to make the prediction. In real life a surgeon incorporates the xray + patient symptoms/pain score.

Skipped a step: the model needs to be trained, which requires the patient symptoms as the target for weight updates. I think that you simply misread my original comment.

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

#184

Post by frognumber »

supermatt wrote: post #177
frognumber wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How? You’re hiding a ton of complicated work in these 2 words DNA sequencing has been following a Moore's Law style curve. It is cheap and easy now. > > AI will develop a custom therapy > > This statement suggests you really don’t know what you’re talking about with regards to AI. > > AI doesn’t develop treatments magically. Work needs to be don’t to curate a dataset of treatments and diseases, BUT even then AI can…

You really don’t understand what you are talking about. Cancer is not an infection. You can’t sequence it and treat it as you would a pathogen.

Cancer is a mutation. Much of the most promising recent work I've read on therapies focuses on:

1) Understanding the specific mutations

2) Helping the immune system find way to identify, and therefore attack, those specific cancer cells

More of the work focuses on t-cells, but otherwise, it's not too dissimilar from the work on infections.

I should know better than to discuss medicine on a SWE forum. Every post here starts with an insult. Not a single post contains any technical detail, nor even clues that people even understand the words I'm using (t-cell, MHC, etc.). It's like arguing with a cross between a five-year-old and a teenager who knows better.

I think I'm done here. There is no point.

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

#185

Post by Spooky23 »

mlyle wrote: post #170
Spooky23 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cancer isn’t one thing and AI is an important tool that will accelerate treatment and drug development. My late wife detected a mole that was melanoma in 2019. She was within months of being cleared for observation in 2023 when two brain tumors were detected. Despite the best of care, she was gone in 6 months. If her initial treatment had been in 2024 instead of 2019, it’s 80% likely she would be around for another d…

I'm sorry for your loss. I was speaking specifically towards screening more and detecting earlier. They have utility, but recent evidence seems to indicate that it's not nearly as much as the public assumes.

No worries. I share it frequently here because I think the personal connection underscores the import, which sometimes gets lost. It's easy to think about "cancer" in the abstract, and sometimes we miss that it's a mother, a wife, a friend -- I know that I did.

And at the end of the day "cancer" is a category, not a thing. Sometimes (prostate cancer) early detection and intervention is bad, as the cure is worse than the disease! Other times (ovarian cancer), accidental early detection while looking for something else entirely, as symptoms don't present until you've hit Stage 4 typically.

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

#187

Post by gfodor »

BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #99
gfodor wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don’t know what you could be saying other than that caring about poor people or welfare recipients is a leftist meme. That was pretty much all of the “leftism” in this article.

You can start by noticing the explicit capitalization of the adjective “Black”

There are others but that is enough to bucket it in as someone who is dabbling in leftist memetics at a minimum

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

#188

Post by gfodor »

striking wrote: post #138
_xerces_ wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a few snippets that use language typically used by those on the further left with a bit of an agenda. I am kind of center-left myself, so I agree with some of the sentiment, but I tend to think that a lot of the issues they ascribe to purposeful, scheming evil actors are often just defects in how our society works on a macro scale. - "AI is used to disproportionately benefit the privileged while worsening inequa…

I don't think there's anything wrong with pointing these issues out, even if you think AI is merely an accelerant of existing social issues. And it's not necessarily a question of how left you are to believe so. Ultimately what's important is the outcome, and if the outcome is an increase in marginalization, then I think something should be done. Stopping AI is probably suboptimal but the alternative that preserves t…

You’re just not clued into the lingo. This person is an ideologue and is trying to hide it somewhat but is failing to completely omit the use of language that reveals the leftist ideology they have been swimming in.

Few people on HN can read this kind of critique without short circuiting but it’s a valid critique and I would bet a good sum that if you looked into this author you’d find lots more direct evidence of promulgation of leftist ideology (critical theory)

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

#189

Post by gfodor »

rain_iwakura wrote: post #129
BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know what you could be saying other than that caring about poor people or welfare recipients is a leftist meme. That was pretty much all of the “leftism” in this article.

The fact that the poster focuses on the term ("leftism") rather than on the substance is itself a red flag imo. It puts the discussion on a weird tripolar spectrum: you're either leftist, centrist, or rightwing (of which the poster is likely to posit themselves as a center, to avoid being called biased). I don't think it's terribly productive, and unless the article was calling for Bolshevik Revolution, I don't mind…

No, there is no fallacy here. You’re just ignorant. There are several signifying phrases and terms used here that are commonly used by people who have absorbed critical theory ideology.

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

#190

Post by squigz »

gfodor wrote: post #187
BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know what you could be saying other than that caring about poor people or welfare recipients is a leftist meme. That was pretty much all of the “leftism” in this article.

You can start by noticing the explicit capitalization of the adjective “Black” There are others but that is enough to bucket it in as someone who is dabbling in leftist memetics at a minimum

Truly my only response to your comments here is: wow.
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