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, please.

You're saying the tool in its current form with it's data "seems pretty intentionally eugenics" and..."a tool for eugenics". And since you said the people who made that data, the AI tool, and those who are now using it are also responsible for anything bad ...they are by your supposed extension eugenicists/racists and whatever other grotesque and immoral thing you can think of. Because your link says that regardless of intention, the AI engineers should ABSOLUTELY be punished.

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 rational?

Would I have had this conversation with you if the tool worked really well on only black people and allowed white people to die disproportionately? I honestly can't say. But I feel you would be quiet on the issue. Am I wrong?

I don't think using the data, as it is, to save lives makes you racist or supports eugenics. You seem to believe it does. That's what I'm getting after. That's why I think we are reading different books.

Once again...define eugenics for me, please.

Regardless, nothing I have said means that I don't recognize institutional racism and that I don't want the data set to become more evenly distributed so it takes into consideration the full spectrum of human life and helps ALL people.

Yeah I'm done educating you tbh. Not worth my time when you're arguing in bad faith.

Learn what a strawman is. 90% of your post was strawman after strawman.

Define strawman for me, kiddo. Then re-read your above comment. I counted 6, can you find all 6 strawman arguments in your comment?

The conversation was never about you or your ego, but youve thoroughly convinced me with this conversation that you are probably both racist and a eugenicist - hit dog hollers and you seriously keep identifying yourself as the racist eugenicist here with no prompting from anyone else. Ig if that's who you are then, whatever. I dont talk to eugenicist racists either.

I expected more from an educated person.

But if you don't want to define the word and cut off the conversation, then you've just left me with the belief you are using eugenics as a "scary" word hoping to sound smart. I believe you can represent your field better.

I hope you have a good one.

For anybody still reading: The AI tool is not for eugenics, the researchers should not be punished, it's not racist to use unethical data, and it helps people who might otherwise die to a horrible disease. It doesn't help all the people we want it to right now, but hopefully, in the future it will be an amazing tool for everyone.

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.

Who said that?

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

It is a direct result of structural racism, as it's a product of the treatment of white men as being the default. You see it all the time in medicine. There are conditions that disproportionately affect black people that we don't know enough about because time and money hasn't been spent studying it.

Women face the same problem. Lots of conditions apply differently in women. An example of this being why women historically have been underrepresented in e.g. autism diagnoses. It presents differently so for a while the assumption was made that women just can't be autistic.

I don't think necessarily that people who perpetuate this problem are doing so out of malice, they probably don't think of women/black people as lesser (hell, many probably are women and/or black), but it doesn't change the fact that structural problems requires awareness and conscious effort to correct.

Again, no.

There are actual normal reasons that can explain this. Don't assume evil when stupidity (or in this case, physics) does it. Darker patches on darker skin are harder to detect, just as facial features in the dark, on dark skin are garder to detect because there is literally less light to work with

Scream racism all you want but you're cheapening the meaning of the word and you're not doing anyone a favor.