These Algorithms Look at X-Rays—and Somehow Detect Your Race
The study’s authors aren’t sure what cues are used
"...Frustratingly, the authors of the new study could not figure out how exactly their models could so accurately detect a patient’s self-reported race. They say that will likely make it harder to pick up biases in such algorithms. Whatever the algorithms were seeing, they saw it clearly. The software could still predict patient race with high accuracy when x-rays were degraded so that they were unreadable to even a trained eye, or blurred to remove fine detail. Luke Oakden-Rayner, a coauthor on the new study and director of medical imaging research at Royal Adelaide Hospital, Australia, calls the AI ability the collaborators uncovered “the worst superpower.” He says that despite the unknown mechanism, it demands an immediate response from people developing or selling AI systems to analyze medical scans." (Wired, 5 August 21)
Posted: August 7, 2021, 10:42 AM