AI Skin Cancer Diagnoses Risk Being Less Accurate For Dark Skin (theguardian.com) 56
AI systems being developed to diagnose skin cancer run the risk of being less accurate for people with dark skin, research suggests. From a report: The potential of AI has led to developments in healthcare, with some studies suggesting image recognition technology based on machine learning algorithms can classify skin cancers as successfully as human experts. NHS trusts have begun exploring AI to help dermatologists triage patients with skin lesions. But researchers say more needs to be done to ensure the technology benefits all patients, after finding that few freely available image databases that could be used to develop or "train" AI systems for skin cancer diagnosis contain information on ethnicity or skin type. Those that do have very few images of people with dark skin.
Dr David Wen, first author of the study from the University of Oxford, said: "You could have a situation where the regulatory authorities say that because this algorithm has only been trained on images in fair-skinned people, you're only allowed to use it for fair-skinned individuals, and therefore that could lead to certain populations being excluded from algorithms that are approved for clinical use. Alternatively, if the regulators are a bit more relaxed and say: 'OK, you can use it [on all patients]', the algorithms may not perform as accurately on populations who don't have that many images involved in training." That could bring other problems including risking avoidable surgery, missing treatable cancers and causing unnecessary anxiety, the team said.
Dr David Wen, first author of the study from the University of Oxford, said: "You could have a situation where the regulatory authorities say that because this algorithm has only been trained on images in fair-skinned people, you're only allowed to use it for fair-skinned individuals, and therefore that could lead to certain populations being excluded from algorithms that are approved for clinical use. Alternatively, if the regulators are a bit more relaxed and say: 'OK, you can use it [on all patients]', the algorithms may not perform as accurately on populations who don't have that many images involved in training." That could bring other problems including risking avoidable surgery, missing treatable cancers and causing unnecessary anxiety, the team said.
Is that because (Score:3, Insightful)
There are fewer samples in the training set or because the visual signal's SNR for skin cancer is lower for dark skin by virtue of the contrast between healthy skin and cancer being *objectively* lower for dark skin?
I know. I'm sorry. I used the "o" word. I promise to do better next time and rage against the laws of logic, mathematics, and the physical universe next time.
Re:Is that because (Score:5, Insightful)
The primary means of diagnosis of skin cancers is visual. Lower contrast between cancer visual indicators and skin tone = lower signal strength.
Due to lower instances of skin cancer in this cohort there will be less data overall, with lower certainty in diagnosis where data does exist due to skin tone differences.
This is a bias of nature, not a bias of race. A cosmic injustice perhaps, but one without a villain to pillory.
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And yet humans can cope with dark skin just fine, so what is the issue with AI?
It's poor hardware. The lighting and the camera's settings are calibrated for light skin. Same thing used to happen a lot in movies, the lighting and film stock was all designed for light skin and people with darker skin tended to look even darker than they really were, with little contrast and all the subtle shades of their skin tones lost.
Even now you often find with cosmetic products there are 10 different light shades and 1 o
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You're on the money: SNR is the objective reason for this. The primary means of diagnosis of skin cancers is visual. Lower contrast between cancer visual indicators and skin tone = lower signal strength. Due to lower instances of skin cancer in this cohort there will be less data overall, with lower certainty in diagnosis where data does exist due to skin tone differences.
Melanin blocks out sunlight to avoid skin cancer. People closer to the equator are exposed to more solar radiation, so develop more melanin than races from closer to the poles. With greater filters, you will find fewer dark-skinned individuals with skin cancer.
This is a bias of nature, not a bias of race. A cosmic injustice perhaps, but one without a villain to pillory.
In the case of skin cancer, I wouldn't call having darker skin an injustice of any kind; it is such an advantage that it became the norm for peoples living in the tropics.
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The SNR improves if you use a woke approved pronoun.
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Re:Is that because (Score:4, Insightful)
If they had tried, the latter seems likely enough. But one piece of interesting info would be how humans (dermatologists) perform on different skin tones.
It's not just a matter of SNR. The base rate for skin cancer is less with darker skin - more protection:
So, basically, nothing about the incidence, diagnosis, or survival rate of skin cancer is the same for people with white vs. black skin. And that's before AI enters the picture at all.
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It's likely that doctors have less experience at spotting skin cancer with darker skin, because it is less common in those groups. So AI could be a great leveller here, if trained to properly spot cancer in dark skin. Unlike a human the AI can gain a lot of experience very quickly and never forgets it.
One other thing that isn't mentioned here is access to medical services. Late diagnosis could be partly due to patients not presenting themselves for checks until later. People will less money or less good hea
The obvious solution (Score:5, Insightful)
FFS this isn't racism or whatever, it's using what's available. It's stupid silicon, it has no free thought. Quit reading racism into everyfucking thing that happens.
Re:The obvious solution (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes, that's the solution. The problem isn't AI is racist, it's the training data is. AI is only as good as the training data, and the real problem is all training data contains bias. AI just makes it plainly obvious what was subtle before.
Perhaps the training data was simply all the employ
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Yes, that's the solution. The problem isn't AI is racist, it's the training data is. AI is only as good as the training data, and the real problem is all training data contains bias. AI just makes it plainly obvious what was subtle before.
You're an idiot. Dark people have less skin cancer to begin with. There will be less sample of cancerous dark skins to analyze.
Perhaps the training data was simply all the employees in the company, which seems reasonable as a starting point, except you don't realize that perhaps a slightly racist HR employee has made it so most people are white.
Listen up, Captain Fucktard: White people are still the majority in the US. Therefore, in a perfect situation, the employee ratio should reflect the general population. (made up number, but probably fairly accurate) White = 60%, Black = 12%, Mexican = 20%, Everybody else = 8%
So, if you've got 100 employees, 60 of them should be white. That's a majority of white people. it'
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In fact, the real truth is, and I suspect no one wants to hear it, is that racism is so embedded in society that it's everywhere. All AI has done is basically expose it (it's dumb, it doesn't known any better, after all). And people are reacting because it's an ugly truth raising all sorts of very uncomfortable questions in basically every area of society. In places that prided themselves in equality, or in being a meritocracy, or such (especially in western democracies), having such ugliness exposed is galling. After all, it goes against the entire grain of being and the hypocrisy in it all.
One more thing... Don't fuck the rest of us by reproducing. Your genetic line needs to end with you.
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It's stupid silicon, it has no free thought.
Oh stop with the double standards.
Stupid silicon also does not and cannot do anything without a human to drive it. Algorithms don't come from nowhere and run on "stupid silicon" all by themselves in a way that ultimate no one is responsible for the output.
A person made it, a person is responsible.
Stop This (Score:5, Insightful)
Your woke bullshit is killing people.
Yes, contrast helps. Yes, training sets can be increased in size and variety. Yes, even human experts can pick out more on an albino. Yes, algorithms need adjustment for different inputs - that's goddamn reality.
This technology is so helpful in assisting dermatologists that the hand-wringing worrywarts are going to kill people with their virtue-signaling delays.
That is NOT a virtue. It's mental illness and we don't need an AI to detect it.
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Buddhism had a nascent evangelical phase quite early. Ashoka the Great, had a battlefield conversion to Buddhism seeing the carnage he had inflicted on the kingdom of Kalinga. He sent emissaries to spread the kindness and tolerance of Buddha to Sri Lanka, China, Pamirs (Northern Afghanistan ). But that phase passed quickly.
Majority of Christians have accepted peaceful coexistence, true. But there are some pockets who fun
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To this day it's a really big deal for them [pbs.org].
Re: Stop This (Score:2)
As far as I am aware, mormons bring bibles with them, not guns.
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> As far as I am aware, Mormons bring bibles with them, not guns.
I don't see those as mutually exclusive.
"You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word."
- Irwin Corey, but attributed to Al Capone
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> As far as I am aware, Mormons bring bibles with them, not guns.
I don't see those as mutually exclusive.
"You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word." - Irwin Corey, but attributed to Al Capone
Speaking as one who served a full-time proselytizing mission, I can testify that missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are not allowed to handle firearms, or any other types of weapons. Scriptures can be a bit heavy, but they aren't effective weapons in a fist fight.
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As far as I am aware, mormons bring bibles with them, not guns.
I am in the 8th generation of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (commonly called Mormons). My family was baptized in 1831 (a year after Joseph Smith organized the Church under the laws of New York). Myself and several of my ancestors have served full-time proselytizing missions for the Church. Missionary work is mostly peaceful - finding people who want to know more, then eventually invite them to be baptized and formally join the Church. If someone doesn't want to receive the messa
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I have little problem with them burning the drawn pedophilia in public school libraries in question. That you do says more about you than anything. And a Bulwark article? Really?
Woke-ism is just right wing satanic panic (Score:1, Troll)
Your woke bullshit is killing people
Many proselytizing religions go through a phase where they don't care if infidels (or believers even) have to die in order to spread the good news.
Some faith traditions outgrow it or never experience it at all. Judiasm stopped spreading by the sword in premodern times. The Bahai faith and Buddhism never fell into the trap. Christianity was a recent convert to peaceful coexistence, with religious wars of conquest falling out of fashion by the 19th century. Islam still has pockets of it that hold sway in parts of the world. Wokism shares that dubious honor with the Taliban.
Remember in the 80s when news reports were telling parents that D&D and Heavy Metal would make your kids worship Satan? For those too young or outside the USA, we call this "Satanic Panic." Everyone's parents were worried the world was changing too fast and going to hell in a handbasket and the children were going to become Satan worshiping devils and this scary new heavy metal music plus the weird non-religious mysticism of Dungeons and Dragons were going to cause it, also a bit of the horror movies
Re: Woke-ism is just right wing satanic panic (Score:2)
If your username indicates which particular belly you're in, I'm not too far from you and I'm seeing and hearing exactly the same things you are. I'm out in the burbs though. Lots of woke in town government but too low of a population density to matter.
Point is, have a look at your local paper about what and who has influence over state and city government.
I can look at the laws passed to see the influence (Score:2)
If your username indicates which particular belly you're in, I'm not too far from you and I'm seeing and hearing exactly the same things you are. I'm out in the burbs though. Lots of woke in town government but too low of a population density to matter.
Point is, have a look at your local paper about what and who has influence over state and city government.
The locals complain how corporatist the gov is. :) I happen to like it. I prefer jobs over virtue signaling...and "conservatives" have a terrible record with the economy in the last 20 years. Republicans of 40 years ago? Yeah, I'd probably vote for them. I only vote Democrat because Republicans are so inept at handling the economy or general governing...or really anything beyond cutting taxes for the 1%.
Pay close attention. Our local politicians tweet shit to look cool, but govern from the center
Re: I can look at the laws passed to see the influ (Score:2)
They govern from the center now because most of those people are age 40 and up.
But pay attention to what they say and how they groom their replacements. What ideas and which people do the university presidents and hospital leaders and the CEOs elevate and hold up as an example to the next generation?
Kendi wrote one of those forgettable woke diatribes in the Globe a while back arguing that any testing in the schools is racist. Boston exam schools aren't really exam schools anymore with new admissions standar
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Re:Stop This (Score:4, Insightful)
Skin cancer affects those with lighter skin FAR more than those with darker skin. In the US the ratio is something like 22:1 (source: https://dermlite.com/pages/eth... [dermlite.com])
Skin cancers typically manifest as a darker patch of skin - on someone with very light skin a dark patch is very easy to detect, if someone's skin is already dark then such things are much harder to detect.
So a system which is able to detect skin cancers in light skinned patients (ie the vast majority of patients who have skin cancer) does the most good and can start saving lives. If you delay this technology because it doesn't work on darker skin then you'll be spending a huge amount of extra effort for a very small additional benefit, but how many light skinned people will die while waiting for this?
Making everything about race and accusing people of bias is absolutely stupid. The fact is there are inherent differences between races so this is obviously going to translate into differences in the way certain conditions are detected and treated.
The people developing these technologies are trying to produce a useful technology to aid diagnosis and save lives, but instead of being able to get on with their jobs they now have to deal with this shit.
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The facts are there, but they are not the complete facts. The partial facts are being used to draw conclusions which are misleading.
No technology is perfect, this technology is better than nothing.
Those with light skin are massively more likely to suffer from skin cancer.
Skin cancer is usually detected because the cancer is darker than the surrounding skin, this obviously makes it easier to detect when the surrounding skin is lighter.
Because those with light skin are massively more likely to get skin cancer
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You just repeated what the summary said. There was never a woke slant or any hint of social justice until you added it. You really do have wokeness on the brain.
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> are going to kill people with their virtue-signaling delays.
On purpose though: https://bostonreview.net/scien... [bostonreview.net]
"Sensitive to these injustices, we have taken redress in our particular initiative to mean providing precisely what was denied for at least a decade: **a preferential admission option for Black and Latinx heart failure patients to our specialty cardiology service**. The Healing ARC will include a flag in our electronic medical record and admissions system suggesting that **providers admit Bl
Re: Stop This (Score:4, Interesting)
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Here's the actual study: https://www.thelancet.com/jour... [thelancet.com]
They don't sound "woke", they sound like doctors doing a serious study into the effectiveness of a new technology and raising some statistically valid concerns, along with an examination of why the issues may be occurring.
In this case, it's anti-woke bullshit that is killing people.
poster msmash is a trolll (Score:3, Insightful)
Easy solution in 2021 (Score:3, Funny)
Let them self-identify as white.
Ethnicity not recorded (Score:2)
Few of the 21 datasets recorded the ethnicity or skin type of the individuals photographed
Isn't it obvious from the picture? Both a human and an AI can tell the difference between light and dark. The lack of dark skin is indeed a problem, but I wonder why the study had to rely on metadata for skin tone when it is the most obvious thing you can extract from a picture.
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His sig is whining about being called "racist" and "sexist". He seems to be convinced it's because of democrat presidents but given his stance on diversity, this seems unlikely.
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No, it is not "just an opinion" — it is a self-evident truth. As TFA illustrates — again. The differences in genetic make-up impede development of medical procedures, necessitating more testing.
The racial strife — over superficial literally skin-deep differences — continues to be the source of major animosity among Americans — or so the TV is telling us. They may be overstating the problem for ratings, but it is still a real one [fbi.gov].
Then there are freaks pretending, Mammals can hav
Who is this guy? (Score:2)
Who is this "Al Skin Cancer", and how did he diagnose that risk is less accurate for dark skin? What kind of risk?
that is (Score:1)
In latest news... (Score:2)
In latest news, scientists find it is harder to see in the dark.