Why is there a lack of robust training data across skin colors? Could it be that people with darker skin colors have less access to cutting edge medical care and research studies? Would be pretty racist.

There is a similar bias in medical literature for genders. Many studies only consider males. That is sexist.

Why is there a lack of robust training data across skin colors? Could it be that people with darker skin colors have less access to cutting edge medical care and research studies? Would be pretty racist.

There is a similar bias in medical literature for genders. Many studies only consider males. That is sexist.

Why is there a lack of robust training data across skin colors? Could it be that people with darker skin colors have less access to cutting edge medical care and research studies? Would be pretty racist.

There is a similar bias in medical literature for genders. Many studies only consider males. That is sexist.

Reading the article, it seems like badly regulated procurement processes with a company that did not meet the criteria to begin with.

Poor results on people with darker skin colour are a known issue. However, the article says its training data containes ONLY white patients. The issue is not hate against AI, it's about what the tools can do with obviously problematic data.

Unless the article is lying, these are valid concerns that have nothing to do with hating on AI, it has all to do with the minimal requirements for health AI tools.

My only real counter to this is who created the dataset and did the people that were creating the app have any power to affect that? To me, to say something is racist implies intent, where this situation could be that, but it could also be a case where it's just not racially diverse, which doesn't necessarily imply racism.

There's a plethora of reasons that the dataset may be mostly fair skinned. To prattle off a couple that come to mind (all of this may be known, idk, these are ignorant possibilities on my side) perhaps more fair skinned people are susceptible so there's more data, like you mentioned that dark skinned individuals may have less options to get medical help, or maybe the dataset came from a region with not many dark skinned patients. Again, all ignorant speculation on my part, but I would say that none of those options inherently make the model racist, just not a good model. Maybe racist actions led to a bad dataset, but if that's out of the devs control, then I wouldn't personally put that negative on the model.

Also, my interpretation of what racist means may differ, so there's that too. Or it could have all been done intentionally in which case, yea racist 100%

Edit: I actually read the article. It sounds like they used public datasets that did have mostly Caucasian people. They also acknowledged that fair skinned people are significantly more likely to get melanoma, which does give some credence to the unbalanced dataset. It's still not ideal, but I would also say that maybe nobody should put all of their eggs in an AI screening tool, especially for something like cancer.

My only real counter to this is who created the dataset and did the people that were creating the app have any power to affect that? To me, to say something is racist implies intent, where this situation could be that, but it could also be a case where it's just not racially diverse, which doesn't necessarily imply racism.

There's a plethora of reasons that the dataset may be mostly fair skinned. To prattle off a couple that come to mind (all of this may be known, idk, these are ignorant possibilities on my side) perhaps more fair skinned people are susceptible so there's more data, like you mentioned that dark skinned individuals may have less options to get medical help, or maybe the dataset came from a region with not many dark skinned patients. Again, all ignorant speculation on my part, but I would say that none of those options inherently make the model racist, just not a good model. Maybe racist actions led to a bad dataset, but if that's out of the devs control, then I wouldn't personally put that negative on the model.

Also, my interpretation of what racist means may differ, so there's that too. Or it could have all been done intentionally in which case, yea racist 100%

Edit: I actually read the article. It sounds like they used public datasets that did have mostly Caucasian people. They also acknowledged that fair skinned people are significantly more likely to get melanoma, which does give some credence to the unbalanced dataset. It's still not ideal, but I would also say that maybe nobody should put all of their eggs in an AI screening tool, especially for something like cancer.

My only real counter to this is who created the dataset and did the people that were creating the app have any power to affect that?

A lot of AI research in general was first done by largely Caucasian students, so the datasets they used skewed that way, and other projects very often started from those initial datasets. The historical reason there are more students of that skin tone is because they have in general the most money to finance the schooling, and that's because past racism held African-American families back from accumulating wealth and accessing education, and that still affects their finances and chances today, assuming there is no racism still going on in scholarships and accepting students these days.

Not saying this is specifically happening for this project, just a lot of AI projects in general. It causes issues with facial recognition in lots of apps for example.

Seems more like a byproduct of racism than racist in and of itself.

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.

Seems more like a byproduct of racism than racist in and of itself.

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.

My only real counter to this is who created the dataset and did the people that were creating the app have any power to affect that? To me, to say something is racist implies intent, where this situation could be that, but it could also be a case where it's just not racially diverse, which doesn't necessarily imply racism.

There's a plethora of reasons that the dataset may be mostly fair skinned. To prattle off a couple that come to mind (all of this may be known, idk, these are ignorant possibilities on my side) perhaps more fair skinned people are susceptible so there's more data, like you mentioned that dark skinned individuals may have less options to get medical help, or maybe the dataset came from a region with not many dark skinned patients. Again, all ignorant speculation on my part, but I would say that none of those options inherently make the model racist, just not a good model. Maybe racist actions led to a bad dataset, but if that's out of the devs control, then I wouldn't personally put that negative on the model.

Also, my interpretation of what racist means may differ, so there's that too. Or it could have all been done intentionally in which case, yea racist 100%

Edit: I actually read the article. It sounds like they used public datasets that did have mostly Caucasian people. They also acknowledged that fair skinned people are significantly more likely to get melanoma, which does give some credence to the unbalanced dataset. It's still not ideal, but I would also say that maybe nobody should put all of their eggs in an AI screening tool, especially for something like cancer.

Yeah, it does make it racist, but which party is performing the racist act? The AI, the AI trainer, the data collector, or the system that prioritises white patients? That's the important distinction that simply calling it racist fails to address.

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.

If someone with dark skin gets a real doctor to look at them, because it's known that this thing doesn't work at all in their case, then they are better off, really.

Do you think any of these articles are lying or that these are not intended to generate certain sentiments towards immigrants?

Are they valid concerns to be aware of?

The reason I'm asking is because could you not say the same about any of these articles even though we all know exactly what the NY Post is doing?

Compare it to posts on Lemmy with AI topics. They're the same.

It's, going to erase me?

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.

Though I get the point, I would caution against calling "racism!" on AI not being able to detect molea or cancers well on people with darker skin; its harder to see darker areas on darker skins. That is physics, not racism