<story><title>AI Recognises Race in Medical Images</title><url>https://explainthispaper.com/ai-recognises-race-in-medical-images/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>phkahler</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt; People are not &amp;#x27;race x&amp;#x27; or &amp;#x27;race y&amp;#x27; biologically, as if race is some discrete set of features common to a whole population.&lt;p&gt;Clearly people &lt;i&gt;are&lt;/i&gt; biologically different based on race and the AI here is picking up on that. My kids orthodontist even told me they align teeth in part based on race. The Asian arch is flatter across the front for example. I asked about this because an engineer I worked with had a father in dentistry and told me my kid had &amp;quot;German teeth in an Irish mouth&amp;quot; which matched her ancestry, which he didn&amp;#x27;t know - just said that in response to my description of the crowding.&lt;p&gt;So YES, races have biological differences. If not, we wouldn&amp;#x27;t be able to tell where people are from. I get that it&amp;#x27;s not cool to discriminate based on race, but it&amp;#x27;s not OK or even practical to deny that it exists (see dentistry example above).</text></item><item><author>sillyquiet</author><text>IMO it&amp;#x27;s because it&amp;#x27;s very dubious the AI is doing what the paper is maintaining it&amp;#x27;s doing.&lt;p&gt;People are not &amp;#x27;race x&amp;#x27; or &amp;#x27;race y&amp;#x27; biologically, as if race is some discrete set of features common to a whole population. Every individual has a set of biological features inherited from their ancestors which, theoretically, could include any or all so-called &amp;#x27;races&amp;#x27;. Human beings have  a continuum of features that is heavily interlaced amongst all the &amp;#x27;races&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;Putting it another way, if we were alien visitors, and had in front of us a representative sample of dead bodies from the entire world, we would be hard pressed to sort those bodies into &amp;#x27;races&amp;#x27; based on biological features.&lt;p&gt;For example, we currently use melanin levels as a key indicator of &amp;#x27;race&amp;#x27; today, but an alien, lacking the social context of the significance of say, high levels of melanin, may well consider it a secondary feature since its shared with otherwise unrelated people</text></item><item><author>throwaway894345</author><text>Please forgive me for asking a controversial question (particularly so early in the morning), but if there are all of these biological correlations with race, what does it mean that “race is a social construct”? Is the idea that black people have greater bone mineral density (per TFA) due to social or environmental causes (e.g., diet)? For what it’s worth, I’m a staunch egalitarian and I don’t see that changing either way.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Really pleased with the largely constructive conversation in this thread. Was worried that this was going to be coopted as an ideological flame thread. Thanks for the insightful answers and good faith engagement. Keep up the good work!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>packetlost</author><text>I think you&amp;#x27;re missing the point. &amp;quot;Race&amp;quot; is an attempt to put people with different biological traits into &amp;#x27;buckets&amp;#x27; but in reality there&amp;#x27;s variation, overlap, and blurry lines that make any sort of classification a social approximation at best.&lt;p&gt;No one is going to argue that you get your traits from your ancestors and that regional groups have similar traits due to shared ancestry, it&amp;#x27;s the &lt;i&gt;classification&lt;/i&gt; itself that doesn&amp;#x27;t match up well with reality.</text></comment>
<story><title>AI Recognises Race in Medical Images</title><url>https://explainthispaper.com/ai-recognises-race-in-medical-images/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>phkahler</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt; People are not &amp;#x27;race x&amp;#x27; or &amp;#x27;race y&amp;#x27; biologically, as if race is some discrete set of features common to a whole population.&lt;p&gt;Clearly people &lt;i&gt;are&lt;/i&gt; biologically different based on race and the AI here is picking up on that. My kids orthodontist even told me they align teeth in part based on race. The Asian arch is flatter across the front for example. I asked about this because an engineer I worked with had a father in dentistry and told me my kid had &amp;quot;German teeth in an Irish mouth&amp;quot; which matched her ancestry, which he didn&amp;#x27;t know - just said that in response to my description of the crowding.&lt;p&gt;So YES, races have biological differences. If not, we wouldn&amp;#x27;t be able to tell where people are from. I get that it&amp;#x27;s not cool to discriminate based on race, but it&amp;#x27;s not OK or even practical to deny that it exists (see dentistry example above).</text></item><item><author>sillyquiet</author><text>IMO it&amp;#x27;s because it&amp;#x27;s very dubious the AI is doing what the paper is maintaining it&amp;#x27;s doing.&lt;p&gt;People are not &amp;#x27;race x&amp;#x27; or &amp;#x27;race y&amp;#x27; biologically, as if race is some discrete set of features common to a whole population. Every individual has a set of biological features inherited from their ancestors which, theoretically, could include any or all so-called &amp;#x27;races&amp;#x27;. Human beings have  a continuum of features that is heavily interlaced amongst all the &amp;#x27;races&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;Putting it another way, if we were alien visitors, and had in front of us a representative sample of dead bodies from the entire world, we would be hard pressed to sort those bodies into &amp;#x27;races&amp;#x27; based on biological features.&lt;p&gt;For example, we currently use melanin levels as a key indicator of &amp;#x27;race&amp;#x27; today, but an alien, lacking the social context of the significance of say, high levels of melanin, may well consider it a secondary feature since its shared with otherwise unrelated people</text></item><item><author>throwaway894345</author><text>Please forgive me for asking a controversial question (particularly so early in the morning), but if there are all of these biological correlations with race, what does it mean that “race is a social construct”? Is the idea that black people have greater bone mineral density (per TFA) due to social or environmental causes (e.g., diet)? For what it’s worth, I’m a staunch egalitarian and I don’t see that changing either way.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Really pleased with the largely constructive conversation in this thread. Was worried that this was going to be coopted as an ideological flame thread. Thanks for the insightful answers and good faith engagement. Keep up the good work!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>throwaway894345</author><text>&amp;gt; Clearly people are biologically different based on race and the AI here is picking up on that&lt;p&gt;I think the parent is saying that it&amp;#x27;s possible (likely even) that the AI &lt;i&gt;isn&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt; picking up on biological features, but some other artifact. For example, perhaps the quality of x-ray machines or technicians correlate with race (race and &amp;quot;access to higher quality radiology&amp;quot; both correlate with wealth) and the AI is really picking up on the quality of the imaging. The fact that the AI still worked when the imaging quality was reduced across the board (pixelated into 8x8 squares) suggests that this particular hypothesis is unlikely, but this is the kind of error we&amp;#x27;re discussing.</text></comment>