Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagHealth Care

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Affirmative Action and Health Care

It is high time that our medical journals stick to medicine.
The hyper-woke New England Journal of Medicine claims that affirmative action is a necessary health measure. Read More ›
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Doctor hand holding a stethoscope listening to heartbeat

“Harm Reduction” is Euthanasia’s New Euphemism

Bioethics is growing increasingly monstrous. And that matters.

Once killing the sufferer becomes a societally acceptable means for ending suffering, there is no end to the “suffering” that justifies human termination. We can see this phenomenon most vividly in Canada, because it is happening there more quickly than in most cultures. For example, a recent poll found that 27 percent of Canadians polled strongly or moderately agree that euthanasia is acceptable for suffering caused by “poverty” and 28 percent strongly or moderately agree that killing by doctors is acceptable for suffering caused by homelessness. I can’t imagine that being true ten years ago before euthanasia became legal. Euthanasia mutates a society’s soul.  Killing as “Harm Reduction” This kind of abandonment thinking finds enthusiastic, albeit not unanimous, expression among secular bioethicists. In fact, two Canadian bioethicists just Read More ›

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Why Depend on Only One Source for Modeling AI in Healthcare?

We may be missing many of the ways AI can help us

As we struggle with the COVID-19 crisis, many are beginning to ask hard questions about how our system works, its strengths, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities. One vulnerability might be too heavy reliance on a single source for data modeling and predictions. Considering all the uses to which AI may be put in health care, getting our guidance exclusively from the Institute for Health and Metric Evaluation for modeling is reckless.

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1: IBM’s Watson Is NOT Our New Computer Overlord

AI help, not hype: It won at Jeopardy (with specially chosen “softball” questions) but is not the hoped-for aid to cancer specialists
One problem that has dogged Watson has nothing to do with AI or medicine. The journalism around the introduction of projects like Watson is long on the Gee Whiz! An Electronic Brain! It Won at Jeopardy! And it is short on systematic inquiry as to outcomes versus goals. Read More ›
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Too Big to Fail Safe?

If artificial intelligence makes disastrous decisions from very complex calculations, will we still understand what went wrong?
A neuroscientist offers an example of the kind of thing that can go wrong, while the AI system is still small and focused enough to be easily understood: Read More ›