Oh Noes! AI are going to…

1) Take Yur Jerb

2) Overthrow humanity

3) Make truly effective Marilyn Monrobots, leading to the slow extinction of Man

And now…

AI Can Predict People’s Race From X-Ray Images, And Scientists Are Concerned

If machines can reliably tell White folks from Black at a 90% success rate based purely on just X-ray images, that would tend to indicate that “race is just a social construct” is as inaccurate a statement as reasonable people have known it is. The curious thing is, the researchers don’t know *how* the AI is able to figure this out. There is some difference that the machine sees that human experts can’t.

The “concern” here isn’t that “uh oh, this machine is smarter in some ways than we are,” but “uh oh, this machine might make distinctions that we’re are officially not supposed to notice unless the situation calls for it.”

The report seems to indicate that only White and Black races were included in the study. A whole lot more work would be needed, I imagine, before the AI can distinguish White from Black from Mayan from Pakistani from Japanese from Inuit from Berber.