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.
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.
It’s still not racism. The article itself says there is a lack of diversity in the training data. Training data will consist of 100% “obvious” pictures of skin cancers which is most books and online images I’ve looked into seems to be majority fair skinned individuals.
“…such algorithms perform worse on black people, which is not due to technical problems, but to a lack of diversity in the training data…”
Calling out things as racist really works to mask what a useful tool this could be to help screen for skin cancers.
I love going around in 6 feet of snow without clothes
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.