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by jph00 842 days ago
There is only a single mention of anything even vaguely like what you're reacting to, which is the specific claim of an "intentionally faulty calculation as part of the computational RoboDebt program" in Australia. To jump from this specific (and AFAIK correct) claim to a "conscious decision by "the man" to purposely put certain groups down using AI" seems like quite a leap.

The article largely deals with unfortunate side effects of a combination of feedback loops, implicit bias, economics, and lack of technical understanding in the broader community -- quite the opposite of any "conscious decision".

1 comments

Well, I think the preface leads with this statement, which does seem to indicate a fundamental bias in the thesis that’s overly political:

Second, AI is used to disproportionately benefit the privileged while worsening inequality.

The article talks a lot about the challenges of care delivery and how there appears to be systemic breakdowns in how patients are listened to and how demographics seems to lead to worse outcomes. These are all serious issues. It further states essentially that AI, at least learning based AI, learns what it is trained with and most training data indirectly encodes the various social biases that influence the data collection or what is collected in the data. The is true too.

However neither of these have to do with AI curing cancer. They seem more statements that AI won’t solve all social ills, which is absolutely true. But these don’t speak to given a positive cancer diagnosis can AI provide a route to curing an individuals cancer. I suspect the answer is “maybe,” but none of the social and political points made are why. It’s because cancer is very complex and we need a vector that AI can generate some solution in to treat any specific cancer. Since there are many many types of cancer and many many variants of those types, as well as per individual cancer genetic variability, it seems unlikely “AI will cure cancer,” but I think it’s very likely AI will make cancer treatment much more personalized, discover many new therapeutic agents, and accelerate human driven research. It is already used in generic immunotherapy, mRNA design, and other treatments. As tools and techniques become better, as well as our understanding of how to apply it, AI will help a lot.