[HN Gopher] A New Artificial Intelligence Tool for Cancer
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A New Artificial Intelligence Tool for Cancer
Author : mgh2
Score : 89 points
Date : 2024-10-20 05:12 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hms.harvard.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (hms.harvard.edu)
| aydyn wrote:
| Sounds promising but still needs to be independently validated.
| Its always wise to take AI medical research with a grain of salt.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| Its Harvard, I would literally be more excited for the same
| announcement from the University or Wyoming.
|
| >Sounds promising
|
| More fabrications from one of the biggest grifting institutions
| on Earth, Harvard.
|
| So sick of their name even having merit. They literally license
| their name to sell fake textbooks at airports. Why are they
| even allowed on here.
| Alifatisk wrote:
| Is Harvard that bad? I assumed they were prestige.
| LoganDark wrote:
| That's what they want you to think. I mean this entirely
| non-sarcastically. I don't know exactly how bad they are or
| aren't, but they work hard to look like prestige.
| InkCanon wrote:
| The root of prestige is the Latin word praestigium, which
| means an illusion or delusion. One of the most poetic
| pieces of etymology in todays society.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| There has been a lot of news about academic fraud at
| Harvard lately (although some cases date back decades).
| It's pretty bad when the leader of the institution gets
| busted for it. Harvard's reputation is in free fall.
| Anytime I see Harvard attached to some big announcement, I
| just assume the result has been p-hacked, exaggerated, or
| otherwise manipulated.
| neom wrote:
| "They literally license their name to sell fake textbooks at
| airports."
|
| ...huh? Can't find anything about this on google.
| camillomiller wrote:
| Undoubtedly interesting but still hard to take at face value
| given Harvard's recent issues and retractions in cancer research.
| mgh2 wrote:
| https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/cancer-institut...
| pama wrote:
| The paper is here:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07894-z
| fernly wrote:
| The _abstract_ is there; the full paper costs $29.99 or you
| need a university access id.
| chefandy wrote:
| Good thing silicon valley is pumping billions of dollars and
| burning through unimaginable natural resources in the midst of a
| climate crisis to make systems that compete with commercial
| artists by selling cheap knock-offs of their artwork and
| relieving us of the burden of doing things like writing school
| papers or heartfelt personal correspondence or making animated
| avatars for instant messaging. There's money to be made, so why
| use this amazing new technology to solve humanity's actual
| problems instead of just shoving a bunch of mediocre who-gives-a-
| shit features into people's phones?
| tomr75 wrote:
| cool whine
| chefandy wrote:
| Cool response
| suby wrote:
| I'm confused by your comment. This is an article about AI
| potentially helping with treatment of cancer.
|
| I strongly disagree in any case that we shouldn't be investing
| in AI. I think that there's likely a rising tides lifts all
| boats effect that occurs with improving AI in general -- it all
| feeds into each other. People who work on image generators are
| building expertise in AI and can potentially discover things
| which advance the field, or inspire others to work in the
| field. Humanity getting better at making AI generate images, or
| compete at video games, or predict protein folding, it all
| probably contributes to the rate of improvement in AI.
|
| And it's not unreasonable to think that AI will one day solve
| problems like cancer or climate change, so we should very much
| care about the rate of AI improvement. As for the power
| concerns, ironically, thanks to the increased demand we are
| seeing companies like Microsoft and Oracle make large
| investments in nuclear power now. It could be the case that
| this kicks starts a boom in the nuclear industry which
| eventually brings costs / eases regulations enough to put us in
| a better place in the long run.
|
| It's extremely complex, I don't think we can say at this point
| that investing in AI in the midst of a climate crisis is a
| mistake.
| chefandy wrote:
| You misread my comment. I think solving problems like finding
| genetic patterns in cancer is exactly what we should be
| investing in. That is not even close to the largest resource
| sinks for AI model training right now. In the resources were
| going into generally making AI better, great. They're not.
| They're going until training models for mediocre consumer
| "gee-whizz aint that neat" products.
| evantbyrne wrote:
| I think people may not be aware of how much medical
| research is happening right now based around ML. It is a
| key component of our liquid cancer biopsy. If anything,
| there might be a bit too much hype-driven development at
| the moment. I would be cautious of any ML-based diagnostic
| that isn't leveraging the technology to better understand
| the biological aspects of cancer itself.
| chefandy wrote:
| Great. I'd rather add a drop in that bucket than have
| another model trained to make my phone do something I
| wish it didn't do.
| borski wrote:
| That's not true. That's just what you see.
|
| There is _tons_ of research going on using AI for a lot
| more than memes.
| chefandy wrote:
| I'm not implying that there isn't money going into AI in
| medical research, and a bunch of other worthy pursuits,
| also. However, there's also an extraordinary amount of
| resources going into dumb shit that nobody wants that
| _could_ actually benefit humanity. Not a trivial sum for
| a test, not a large sum that will contribute to
| entertainment-- it 's the equivalent of an airport gift
| shop trinket. The person receiving the useless bauble
| would be better off without it but the giver paid $20 for
| it so...
| alehlopeh wrote:
| Any idea when it won't be the midst of a climate crisis? Oh ok.
| chefandy wrote:
| Surely the nihilist approach will be an effective solution.
| throwaway918299 wrote:
| I'm more skeptical than most on the current wave of AI tech
| innovation.
|
| However, believe it or not, humanity can collectively work on
| different things at the same time. And the people putting emoji
| generators in phones are probably not the people I would want
| doing cancer research. And many many things that we rely on
| today were not directly created by research in those topics and
| were born from innovation in other unrelated areas.
| chefandy wrote:
| You don't feel that the astonishing amount of resources
| poured into current consumer level AI products is different?
| borski wrote:
| No. We poured similarly large amounts of resources into
| hundreds of companies in the dotcom boom, crypto, and so
| on.
|
| This is a phase, just like many others, and will pass.
|
| AI and LLMs will stick around and be important. The hype?
| That will die in favor of something else.
| clcaev wrote:
| In each round of expansion more externalities happen; we
| just fail to tax the externalities to reflect the real
| world consequences.
| borski wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Could you
| clarify?
| chefandy wrote:
| "It's what we've always done" is a classic non-argument
| against doing something. Is there an amount we could
| spend on something that essentially winds up being
| useless that you think would be bad? Do you not think
| there's a trade-off at some level about the sort of
| things people invest in?
| borski wrote:
| That's not the argument I made. You were responding to an
| argument that "humanity can collectively work on
| different things at the same time," and "many things that
| we rely on today were not directly created by research in
| those topics and were born from innovation in other
| unrelated areas."
|
| Your response was "You don't feel that the astonishing
| amount of resources poured into current consumer level AI
| products is different?"
|
| To which I responded that no, I don't feel that the
| amount of resources poured into current consumer level AI
| products is different; it is the same as it has always
| been.
|
| That is not the same as making an argument that that is
| how it _should_ be.
| bcks wrote:
| Unrelated, "Harvard cancer institute moves to retract six
| studies, correct 31 others amid data manipulation claims"
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39097031
| mgh2 wrote:
| Don't forget this: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
| way/2016/09/13/493739074...
| sjmcmahon wrote:
| It's probably worth noting that there's a lot of discussion about
| challenges reproducing the workflow of this paper, and that as-
| described it seems to suffer from data leakage, so much so that
| you can replace sections of their algorithm with random
| initialisation and get at least as good results. See, e.g.:
|
| https://pubpeer.com/publications/C8CFF9DB8F11A586CBF9BD53402...
|
| Having been on both sides of the reviewing process, it seems
| incredibly difficult to get good peer review of data-intensive
| studies in medicine, as few people have the time to really dig
| into the detail of these models.
| ericjmorey wrote:
| Maybe there should be a system in place to fund that sort of
| thing.
| TeslaCoils wrote:
| Nature article and reproducibility? Reminds me of
| https://spectrum.ieee.org/chip-design-controversy
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| Expecting the code to be plagiarized and for the results to fail
| to replicate
| theptip wrote:
| > CHIEF achieved nearly 94 percent accuracy in cancer detection
| and significantly outperformed current AI approaches across 15
| datasets containing 11 cancer types
|
| I would have thought that performance vs. human level is the most
| interesting benchmark? Maybe that is covered in the Nature
| article.
| HexDecOctBin wrote:
| > Title: A New Artificial Intelligence Tool for Cancer
|
| Curing it or causing it? Because that's the typical AI marketing
| appeal, no? "It will kill everyone, except our customers."
| FerretFred wrote:
| UK reader here... As someone who's lived with a dear friend's
| cancer and affects of cancer for the past few years, I'd say that
| early/earlier diagnosis by whatever method is to be welcomed.
| However, if you then can't treat the disease then surely the
| early diagnosis will be for nothing? Sadly, with incidences of
| cancers of all sorts apparently increasing exponentially,
| wordldwife, not having the means to treat it is heartbreaking?
| Actually, as much money and effort needs to be invested in
| finding the cause of various cancers as curing it (or trying to
| cure it).
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