Put this in your mouth, this in your ear and this in your butt. No, put this one in your mouth and this one in your butt.
Posted on 06/16/2023 7:39:10 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
I shudder to think how the AI, based on current state of the art, would react to a novel pandemic. I’ll grant you that the reaction to COVID-19 was a “follow the money” exercise, but how would you eliminate all social and financial bias from AI training?
Hospital monitoring systems already have a lot of algorithmic software built in to assist doctors and nurses. I believe that software will continue to assist caregivers. I draw the line at “assist” at this point in time. I wonder where medical automation will go?
I see a lot of fear on this subject, and in certain contexts, is not at all unjustified. In many cases it is FULLY justified. But I wanted to add this from someone who works in Healthcare and is actively using AI as a tool.
Everything has a duality to it. It can be used or misused. A hammer that is used to build a wonderful coffee table can also be used to murder someone by bashing their skull in.
I started out working clinically, but have worked in the IT end of this for many years now, and AI use in a specialty such as Radiology is NOT primarily used for making a diagnosis that a Radiologist would blindly accept.
THAT would be insanely stupid.
And that is not to say there won’t be a push to change this, as FReeper glorgau observes, there will come a time with pressure to accept those AI findings. But we are not there. And Freeper eyeamok is well justified in the loss of confidence. Who of us hasn’t lost confidence in healthcare over the events of the last three years.
That said, I thought I would offer my perspective. At my institution, we use AI in a couple of different ways, and it is EXTREMELY useful, especially if the volume of work is great, and you don’t have a surplus of people to get it all done quickly.
One way we use it is to have AI scan CT and MR images to look for patterns that may indicate specific abnormalities. We have multiple algorithms, one that looks for indications of Pulmonary Embolism, another that looks for rib fractures, and yet another that scans for what might be a stroke or brain bleed.
I will use the algorithm for brain bleeds (stroke) as an example.
We send our images to the server that analyzes for these specific things, it looks at certain images and uses AI to look for characteristic patterns. If it finds nothing, it uses an API to talk to the workflow orchestration application and writes a specific value to a field in the database.
The “workflow orchestration” application is the heart of the Radiology department, it displays a list of what imaging exams need interpretation, separates them into what are called subspecialties (so people who specialize in reading brain studies see only those, and someone who specializes in musculoskelatal studies see only those) and sorts them by exam age and priority (the urgency with which they must be read) so it helps the Radiogist figure out which ones need to be read right away because the patient is on a gurney in a room in the ED waiting for the result, or if they are someone who has knee pain and can be read today or tomorrow.
They work from the top of their list, and when an exam is selected for interpretation, it opens the images, speech recognition, and electronic medical record all in context for that patient and exam, so the Radiologist does not have to look them up individually in each application, which would not only be inefficient and tedious, but dangerous.
So, If AI sees nothing on the images, a value is written to the database that translates to a “badge” on the exam in the list which is colored green indicating AI did not see anything. The exam must still be read and every image examined, but...it can be done in turn.
There is also a yellow badge indicating that the AI application got the images, but is still looking at them. Also good to know. The Radiologist may choose to read it anyway, keeping in mind they may want to check again if something positive comes back, which would compel them to take a more focused look at the exam to be sure nothing was missed)
But if there is a RED badge indicating something was seen, two things happen. The “badge” is flagged with a red AI+ flag, and the priority of the exam is elevated to what is called a HIGH STAT priorty. This pushes the exam up to the very top of any worklist it is on and will be the next exam read.
So when the Radiologist selects that exam for interpretation, all the images open up, the electronic record opens up in context, a speech recognition job is initiated, any scanned documents or notes for the exam appear automatically, and a desktop AI widget is notified that the exam is opened.
When the AI application sees the exam is opened, it automatically opens the result of its AI analysis of the images and displays them for the Radiologist. It highlights the area it saw the unusual pattern indicating there might be a bleed in, and has a color map applied which makes the abnormal pattern stand out.
All this happens within five to ten seconds!
When a stroke is involved, EVERY SECOND COUNTS. It can mean the difference between simply losing strength in one hand which might be regained with therapy, or losing the entire side of the body permanently for the rest of the person’s life.
The Radiologist MUST read the entire study. But they can, instead of going through the entire brain scan, go right to that and look immediately at it. If there is indication of a stroke, they can pick up the phone, call the ED physician that there IS a stroke, and the ED doc can immediately begin aggressive treatment.
EVERY SECOND COUNTS.
So, even if a Radiogist goes right to that affected area immediatly upon opening the study and is guided on where to look first by Artificial Intelligence, they still have to read, with their human eyes and brain, the rest of the study. But that AI might have saved 30 seconds. Or a minute. Or worse, they might never have seen the defect and missed it completely, and the patient might be permanently impaired or even die.
Again, using these brain exams as an example, in the old days, they might have printed the films to put up on a light box, and a Radiologist might have had to look at a hundred images. That is a lot, but today, there are many hundreds or thousands of images, and each one must be viewed.
That is a lot.
Physicians are humans. They have faults. Some are better than others. A given physician might be distracted. They might not be feeling well, they might have a sick family member or one on the verge of dying...you name it. They could be distracted by people running in and out of the area, asking them questions, phones ringing, that kind of thing. You blink and rub your eyes, and out of those 5,000 images, you miss that ONE image that might be key. It is a huge responsibility, and they are only humans. They are not perfect.
These Artificial Intelligence applications that we use are meant to ASSIST the physicians, not take over their job. Everyone knows that is their purpose, they know the advantages and limitations, and would look at you as if you were a lunatic if you suggested letting a machine do it.
My point in this long post is to reassure the many people who might be horrified at the concept of having the interpretation of their CT Brain involve the use of AI that in these things, AI is an aid, not an end.
Healthcare will kill even more people to make more money like they do in socialist countries.
Berkshire Hathaway, Amazon.com, and JPMorgan Chase joined forces to establish Haven Healthcare to lower costs for healthcare.
Charlie Munger wants to live longer like everyone else. He does not want you to live longer so he can make more money.
He and Warren Buffett spent billions over the years killing children thru “planned parenthood”. Now he wants to do the same for older people.
Amazon Alexa: You have been saying non approved thoughts so you will now die.
Amazon Shuts Down Smart Home for a Week Over Racist Slur Claim
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4161328/posts
Thanks for that- I was just discussing this very thing yesterday with family- it can be good, especially when something like chat ai is used to scour the internet for new articles on specific medical issues that even the experts may be unaware of as that info may have just recently been discovered and put online etc- which can then be examined like you say in an instant- and any relevant info on the topic presented by the Chat AI program- This woudl be especially relevant to people with mystery diseases or conditions where a doc can find all current info on the symptoms etc, and what the disease might be- to narrow down the field of possibilities-
On the flipside, There is supposedly a new tech coming out using AI to mimic a person’s voice where scammers use AI to analyze captured voice of a person- then in seconds, it can supposedly speak using that person’;s voice- the hackers/scammers then use it to make calls to the person’s family members pleading for $$ to ‘stay out of jail’ or whatever-
Have been having conversations with folks over AI ‘taking over Art’ and ‘putting artists out of work’ etc- not gonna happened based on what i see produced by AI text to image programs- they still look very ‘computer generated’ to me- but, what it can do is create unique work which the artist can then take and create their own unique style that look nothing like AI generation, from what the AI produces-
AI is a double edged sword
Put this in your mouth, this in your ear and this in your butt. No, put this one in your mouth and this one in your butt.
AI is absolutely 100% a double edged sword, and not in most stupid, dark, recesses of my brain would I trust good nature and intelligence of humankind to ensure it is never used for stupid or evil puposes.
It is something we need to begin the battle now for, but...that genie may already be out of the bottle.
Dammit.
https://doctors.practo.com/the-hippocratic-oath-the-original-and-revised-version/
. There are two versions of the Hippocratic Oath: the original one and the modern one. The need for a revision was felt as drastic procedures like abortions & surgeries became commonplace and medically valid, questioning a physician’s morals anew.
yep- im afraid scammers are gonna really exploit it- if only they would put their talents to work good instead of evil- our world would be a lot better place to live- they aren’t dumb- they are geniuses in many cases-
but it has incredible potential for good too- you touched on many great points- in the medical field it is invaluable- and as you point out, it’s an aid, not an end all be all omniscient final answer-
bump for later- i didn’t realize it had been revised- i just thought the modern covid scenario created a lot of violations of the oath by medical folks who didn’t give a crap that they were hurting folks by force upon order of state governments-
“One way we use it is to have AI scan ...”
Very informative post. Thanks.
In my mind AI is mostly pattern recognition which has been going on for years. What’s new is advances in image and sound processing, made possible by newer hardware and the army of software people slugging through the mud advancing the front.
The computer are just doing what they’re told as has been the case since Babbage.
“do you trust ai”
Nope.
We cannot take the human factor out of decision making. A machine doesn't have the experience of being a human.
Several classic Star Trek episodes dealt with the idea of man becoming submissive to computer intelligences. Those episodes are more relevant today at the dawn of AI than they were at the dawn of basic data processing.
I suspect is it pattern recognition put on steroids by AI/Machine Learning.
I visited a company probably 15-20 years ago, and they were trying to develop something like this without AI, and using a library of key images for comparison with a current exam and probably brute force computational power done over a wide area network that the Internet didn’t really have as well back then, but I don’t think they had the tools to make it work.
I suspect AI would change all that. It is interesting and useful, but I am in no way any authority on the workings of it, I just understand elements of integration into a workflow.
But AI can be useful. We have another vendor which uses AI to automatically generate impressions for Radiologist reports they dictate. One would think that wouldn’t be that hard in some respects. When a Radiologist dictates a report, they have different sections in the report such as the Description, Technique, Comparisons (to exams done before) Reason, Findings, and Impression.
So, they might dictate five paragraphs of Findings, then, when they get to the Impressions section, they have to re-dictate the key points from those five paragraphs of Findings and boil it down to a a few short key sentences that summarize those five paragraphs. Think of it as making five bullet points to describe a short story after reading it.
It is an area that takes time, because the Radiologist must comb through the five paragraphs and summarize only those in the Impression section. They have to be careful not to forget to include something, and to ensure they are accurate and don’t have a conflict with anything in those five paragraphs.
So, we provide the AI system a file with as many past reports as we can that were dictated by a given Radiologist, and it analyzes them to “learn how they talk”. Once it learns, when the Radiologist gets to the part they have to dictate the impression, it automatically generates an impression FOR them and...it does it in the grammar and syntax they normally use!
In other words, it looks nearly exactly the way they would dictate it themselves.
They initally found it kind of creepy, but...most of the time, they can just read it and click okay without doing much in the way of editing, so they came to like it. It cuts about a third of the time off the creation of the report, and minimizes the risk they might overlook some part of that five paragraphs they dictated and forget to include it in the report, which is a tedious part of the job they MUST perform correctly. AI just helps with that.
And...they STILL have to read it all the way through and approve it.
I absolutely love that movie!
Of course there is a trust factor. You have to trust that the brain surgeon isn’t a crack addict who used a fake resume to get the job. And you have to trust that AI implementations are done ethically.
Just as a hammer can be used to bash someone’s brains in rather then build a coffee table, and are forced to fight to be sure people aren’t bashing in skulls, we also need to fight AI to ensure it is being used to help people and caregivers, not surviell them or use information AI might find in order to funnel patients in to care they don’t need or deny them care they do need.
Humans have responsibility. If we had a functional government, I would feel more sanguine about it, but it seems evil is triumphing lately, so I don’t.
Why, exactly?
Are there reliable data that show AI interpretation is conspicuously inferior to a radiologist, or even dangerously inferior?
I actually find it comforting that a computer can compare and contrast hundreds of images in less than a minute, and instantly isolate the one or two that need special attention.
The most distressing thing about government managed health care is that there are way, way, way too many human beings involved.
I will be happy to accept a machine diagnosis and prescription as long as I have access to a comprehensive medical website and can educate myself on the specific issue and solution.
If immediate treatment is necessary, I will throw the dice and let the humans handle it.
I hear you. Of course they are going to scam to the hilt with AI. There is always evil.
Due to the immature nature of AI, that’s why.
It is entirely plausible to me that in a certain period of time, AI may indeed be able to scan images and perform a valid interpretation.
Not at this time. AI is only as good as the people who design it, and we have neither the moral underpinnings that would enable me to entrust a machine diagnosis of image data, the mature technology to ensure it.
I feel much the same way about self-driving cars, by the way.
But all that said, it does NOT mean that we won’t eventually have AI fully interpreting images or AI driving our cars. I wouldn’t support it at this time.
“but I am in no way any authority on the workings of it”
No one talks about it so I do.
Many years ago I wrote a program for a physicist that crawled up one side of a spectrometer waveform and back down the other side and told him what he otherwise would have figured out using a ruler.
I also once wrote a program that gobbled up a bunch of elevation data and produced a graph with contour lines.
The software sloggers have moved ahead and someone invented the futuristic “Artificial Intelligence” term.
But the artificial intelligence has become intrusive. For example, examining a photograph of a crowd of people and identifying individuals, or imitating someone’s voice.
And then there’s the annoying feature that’s appeared in the text editor I’m now typing in. When I typed “Artificial” above, “Intelligence” was automatically inserted after it.
When I say I am not an “authority” on it, I don’t know the programmatic underpinnings.
But I do know danger when I see it, and I see great danger in AI as an adjunct to totalitarian states.
Like Communist China. And our own.
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