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

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.

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.

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.

Character.ai Faces Lawsuit After Teen’s Suicide - Lemmy.World

The mother of a 14-year-old Florida boy says he became obsessed with a chatbot on Character.AI [http://Character.AI] before his death. On the last day of his life, Sewell Setzer III took out his phone and texted his closest friend: a lifelike A.I. chatbot named after Daenerys Targaryen, a character from “Game of Thrones.” “I miss you, baby sister,” he wrote. “I miss you too, sweet brother,” the chatbot replied. Sewell, a 14-year-old ninth grader from Orlando, Fla., had spent months talking to chatbots on Character.AI [http://Character.AI], a role-playing app that allows users to create their own A.I. characters or chat with characters created by others. Sewell knew that “Dany,” as he called the chatbot, wasn’t a real person — that its responses were just the outputs of an A.I. language model, that there was no human on the other side of the screen typing back. (And if he ever forgot, there was the message displayed above all their chats, reminding him that “everything Characters say is made up!”) But he developed an emotional attachment anyway. He texted the bot constantly, updating it dozens of times a day on his life and engaging in long role-playing dialogues.

(lemmy.world)

You don’t think the people who make the generative algorithm have a duty to what it generates?

And whatever you think anyway, the company itself shows that it feels obligated about what the AI puts out, because they are constantly trying to stop the AI from giving out bomb instructions and hate speech and illegal sexual content.

The standard is not and was never if they were “entirely” at fault here. It’s whether they have any responsibility towards this (and we all here can see that they do indeed have some), and how much financially that’s worth in damages.