The Basque Country is implementing Quantus Skin in its health clinics after an investment of 1.6 million euros. Specialists criticise the artificial intelligence developed by the Asisa subsidiary due to its “poor” and “dangerous” results. The algorithm has been trained only with data from white patients.
I never said that the data gathered over decades wasn’t biased in some way towards racial prejudice, discrimination, or social/cultural norms over history. I am quite aware of those things.
But if a majority of the data you have at your disposal is from fair skinned people, and that’s all you have…using it is not racist.
Would you prefer that no data was used, or that we wait until the spectrum of people are fully represented in sufficient quantities, or that they make up stuff?
This is what they have. Calling them racist for trying to help and create something to speed up diagnosis helps ALL people.
The creators of this AI screening tool do not have any power over how the data was collected. They’re not racist and it’s quite ignorant to reason that they are.
I would prefer that as a community, we acknowledge the existence of this bias in healthcare data, and also acknowledge how harmful that bias is while using adequate resources to remedy the known issues.
There is a more specific word for it: Institutional racism.
They absolutely have power over the data sets.
They could also fund research into other cancers and work with other countries like ones in Africa where there are more black people to sample.
It’s impossible to know intent but it does seem pretty intentionally eugenics of them to do this when it has been widely criticized and they refuse to fix it. So I’d say it is explicitly racist.
Eugenics??? That’s crazy.
So you’d prefer that they don’t even start working with this screening method until we have gathered enough data to satisfy everyones representation?
Let’s just do that and not do anything until everyone is happy. Nothing will happen ever and we will all collectively suffer.
How about this. Let’s let the people with the knowledge use this “racist” data and help move the bar for health forward for everyone.
It isn’t crazy and it’s the basis for bioethics, something I had to learn about when becoming a bioengineer who also worked with people who literally designed AI today and they continue to work with MIT, Google, and Stanford on machine learning… I have spoked extensively with these people about ethics and a large portion of any AI engineer’s job is literally just ethics. Actually, a lot of engineering is learning ethics and accidents - they go hand in hand, like the Hotel Hyatt collapse.
I never suggested they stop developing the screening technology, don’t strawman, it’s boring. I literally gave suggestions for how they can fix it and fix their data so it is no longer functioning as a tool of eugenics.
Different case below, but related sentiment that AI is NOT a separate entity from its creators/engineers and they ABSOLUTELY should be held liable for the outcomes of what they engineer regardless of provable intent.
https://lemmy.world/post/21189801/13055286
I know what bioethics is and how it applies to research and engineering. Your response doesn’t seem to really get to the core of what I’m saying: which is that the people making the AI tool aren’t racist.
Help me out: what do the researchers creating this AI screening tool in its current form (with racist data) have to do with it being a tool of eugenics? That’s quite a damning statement.
I’m assuming you have a much deeper understanding of what kind of data this AI screening tool uses and the finances and whatever else that goes into it. I feel that the whole “talk with Africa” to balance out the data is not great sounding and is overly simplified.
Do you really believe that the people who created this AI screening tool should be punished for using this racist data, regardless of provable intent? Even if it saved lives?
Does this kind of punishment apply to the doctor who used this unethical AI tool? His knowledge has to go into building it up somehow. Is he, by extension, a tool of eugenics too?
I understand ethical obligations and that we need higher standards moving forward in society. But even if the data right now is unethical, and it saves lives, we should absolutely use it.
I addressed that point by saying their intent to be racist or not is irrelevant when we focus on impact to the actual victims (ie systemic racism). Who cares about the individual engineer’s morality and thoughts when we have provable, measurable evidence of racial disparity that we can correct easily?
It literally allows black people to die and saves white people more. That’s eugenics.
It is fine to coordinate with universities in like Kenya, what are you talking about?
I never said shit about the makers of THIS tool being punished! Learn to read! I said the tool needs fixed!
Like seriously you are constantly taking the position of the white male, empathizing, then running interference for him as if he was you and as if I’m your mommy about to spank you. Stop being weird and projecting your bullshit.
Yes, doctors who use this tool on their black patients and white patients equally would be perofmring eugenics, just like the doctors who sterikized indigenous women because they were poor were doing the same. Again, intent and your ego isn’t relevanf when we focus on impacts to victims and how to help them.
We should demand they work in a very meaningful way to get the data to be as good for black people as their #1 priority, ie doing studies and collecting that data
Define eugenics for me.
You’re calling the tool in its current form with it’s data…a tool for eugenics. And since you said the people who made that data and the tool are now responsible for it and are using it…they are eugenicists/racist and whatever other grotesque and immoral thing you can think of. They have to fix it, of course, so it can become something other than a tool for eugenics as it is currently. Can you see where I think your argument goes way beyond the pale?
Would I have had this conversation with you if the tool worked really well on only black people and allowed white people to die? I honestly can’t say. But I think you would be quiet on the issue.
I don’t think using the data as it is to save lives makes you racist. You seem to believe it does.
Regardless, nothing I have said means that I don’t want the data set to become more evenly distributed so it takes into consideration the full spectrum of human life.