To be fair, you're comparing a software company to a hardware one.
No I am not. Apple is a software company at its core. No less an authority than Steve Jobs himself has said so publicly. Not a traditional one to be sure but they don't actually make any of the hardware they sell so they by definition cannot be a hardware company. A company is what it makes and for all practical purposes the only thing Apple actually makes themselves is software. They design some of the hardware but that's not the same thing.
Then, after a few years of active training, the systems will probably be ready to work on their own.
That will (probably) never happen. More likely what will happen is that they will work in conjunction with the physician and the physician will gradually concern themselves more with results interpretation, management, and treatment. But no doctor is going to just let the machine go do its thing without any sort of oversight.
I think that it's the canary in the coal mine for many medical fields.
I think you are worrying about it more than is justified. My wife is a pathologist so I'm watching this issue closely but so far the net benefit seems to be positive.
Image processing neural nets are getting more powerful and more accessible for hospitals and (more importantly) large hospital networks.
I see little evidence we are danger of them getting powerful enough any time soon to start seriously denting the number of doctors needed. I think they will impact how the doctors do their job (and that's probably good) but mostly in the sense of removing a lot of needless busywork and improving quality of care.
This expands well beyond dermatologists. No reason why similar image processing techniques can't be used in radiology, reducing a health system's need to hire more radiologists. Or echocardiogram and electrocardiogram interpretation, freeing up the time of cardiologists (so less cardiologists need to be hired in the future).
I worked in a radiology clinic about 15 years ago where they were using this sort of tech to help with diagnosis. It helps the radiologist do their job better. It doesn't replace the radiologist. (or pathologist or cardiologist etc) To reduce head count you need to have it have enough of an impact to be a step function. I don't think we are in any real danger of that happening any time soon. Even if we did though it will just change some jobs. My wife is an AP/CP pathologist so instead of looking through a microscope most of the day she might end up looking at a monitor or even reading reports more like a clinical pathologist. That's not a bad thing, it's just different.
I'm no expert, but does issuing more shares not just mean you are more in debt?
No. Debt is a different thing. Shares are not a loan, they are a percentage ownership in the company. When you issue stock for sale you are literally selling a portion of the company. Nothing is being loaned. Debt holders typically get repaid before anyone else. Equity holders typically get paid last.
That's not to say that the new owners won't expect a return on their investment but the expectation is that this will come from company growth without a fixed timeline or cash outlay. Generally speaking equity is usually more expensive than debt because the risk to the investor is higher. Research "cost of capital" if you want to understand more.
Aren't shares essentially taking a mortgage on your company, but you do not even have to pay anything back, beyond empty promises.
No they aren't like a mortgage at all. The new owners will expect a return on their investment, this will come in the form of a growing company profits. If the company doesn't deliver those profits at some point the stock price will plunge and the company will either be sold/liquidated or will be unable to raise additional capital. If the company cannot raise capital and isn't profitable then they will go bankrupt.
Apple, Microsoft and Facebook have achieved their huge "market cap" simply by issuing more shares of stock than anyone else -- billions of shares.
Umm, you do realize that if you put more shares out they will be worth less individually, right? The share price isn't fixed so you don't get a bigger market cap just by issuing more shares. There has to be demand for the shares regardless of the number of them. Berkshire Hathaway famously hasn't split their shares for a long time so each share is worth tens of thousands of dollars. You can have the same market cap with fewer shares with a higher value or more shares with a lesser value. It's literally identical to saying a $20 bill is identical in value to two $10 bills. It's only the total value that matters.
Then I learned that Apple reported net income of 50B annually recently.
They've been around that number for the last three years. Please do keep up.
Apparently, marketing works.
Companies don't get to Apple's size without provide a shit ton of value to customers. Might not be value to you but it definitely is value to a lot of people and it sure as shit isn't just marketing.
They probably have the highest markup margin in tech.
No they do not. It's not at all uncommon for software companies to have higher margins than Apple. Microsoft routinely has higher net margins than Apple. On average around 5% higher which is a HUGE amount.
"AI better at something" is likely to become very common., in many fields.
But that doesn't always mean what people think it means. In this case for instance it doesn't matter if the AI is marginally better at guessing whether a lesion is melanoma from a picture because that isn't how melanoma is actually diagnosed. If the doctor even suspects a small chance of melanoma they are going to biopsy the tissue and send it to pathology where the pathologist tells them what it really is to the best of out knowledge. No dermatologist is going to treat a melanoma without a biopsy. The only important detail here is that the number of false negatives be as small as possible. When it doubt, cut it out. There should be some amount of false positives if the doctor is doing his job correctly. Obviously we want as few of these as possible but it's not the critical issue.
Technology like this isn't going to replace dermatologists. It's just going to become a supplemental tool to help ensure consistency of care and to help ensure more accurate results.
Dermatologists don't diagnose melanoma on the skin. They might suspect melanoma but what they do is biopsy the sample and send it to pathology where they can run a variety of tests (genetic markers, stains, etc) and look at the tissue morphology carefully under a microscope. The pathologist then gives an evaluation of the probability that this is indeed a malignancy. Melanoma's are sneaky and can resemble a wide variety of other conditions, many of them benign and there is no dermatologists or AI system that can get them right 100% of the time. Why? There is NO definitive test for all forms of melanoma nor is there any definitive criteria. In many cases it is just a probabilistic guess as to how likely this is to be melanoma or any other lesion. There is an alarming amount of gestalt in many of the diagnosis.
So the dermatologist doesn't have to be right, they just have to not have a false negative and cut out an adequate amount of tissue to give the pathologist a chance to make a diagnosis. They SHOULD be cutting out lesions that turn out to not be melanoma. So it doesn't matter if the AI is slightly better at guessing whether a lesion is melanoma or not on the skin because if the doctor even suspects it might be melanoma he/she should be biopsying the lesion anyway. Neither the doctor nor the AI actually knows what it is until pathology has a chance to look at it.
(Source: my wife is a dermatopathologist and does this stuff for a living)
The obvious conclusion is therefore not to train more doctors to correctly diagnose melanomas but to have them photograph parts of your body and submit the pictures to an IT system which will in turn deliver a diagnosis.
No visual IT system nor any doctor can definitively diagnose a melanoma on the skin. They can have a strong suspicion and a good dermatologist will be right most of the time but they cannot be certain in all but the most obvious of cases. Even then the tissue has to be biopsied and sent to pathology for any sort of definitive diagnosis. There they have stains, genetic markers and other tools to figure out what is growing on the patient. Furthermore a definitive diagnosis is not always possible because we have no unambiguous test for all forms of melanoma nor do we even have an unambiguous set of criteria in some cases. There is an alarming amount of gestalt in the process. Some are fairly straightforward and others are nigh impossible to diagnose. Melanoma is challenging because it can appear in a variety of forms because of it's genetic origins. It can look near indistinguishable from many other types of lesions and the genetic tests and stains and other tools we have don't always give a clear answer.
The simple fact is that in many cases a diagnosis is really just an informed guess based on the probabilities. We're saying effectively that there is an X% chance that this is melanoma so we should treat it as if it is just to be safe.
Source: my wife is a dematopathologist so I get to hear about all this stuff daily.
Years of schooling only to be replaced by a tech and AI (if a tech is even needed for imaging)...
That's like arguing that a code library and compiler can replace a programmer. It might change the tasks they have to deal with but it doesn't eliminate the job. If you think something like this is going to replace dermatologists you have no idea what they actually do.
Where can I send my dick pics... I mean epidermal selfies?
I think this says everything we need to know about you.
When an AI makes a mistake, every single system connected to the network might learn from it and know better for next time.
You know the converse is true as well. If they make a mistake ALL the machines will make the same mistake until it is corrected. With a human doctor that isn't generally true.
So many people want to challenge the scarcity. I feel I must respond that large diamonds are rare and do have legitimate scarcity value.
Not when you can fabricate one in a lab any time you want from one of the most abundant elements in the universe. Diamonds are only scarce if one actually gives a shit about the fact that they were dug out of the ground. Such irrational concerns are pretty hard to justify. Hence DeBeer's frantic efforts to try to devalue "synthetic" diamonds through marketing scare tactics. This is ultimately likely to only be a delaying tactic since this sort of marketing BS tends to fall apart eventually in the relentless face of supply and demand.
However I also agree that the market value of diamonds is manipulated, though I think that most of the manipulation is psychological, easily summarized by the "Diamonds are forever" slogan.
Oh it's multi level manipulation. It originates out of the fact that DeBeers for a long time basically held a de-facto monopoly on the diamond trade and they still are a big player with about 35% of the rough diamond market. They also did/do hold large reserves of diamonds out of circulation to manipulate market prices. And they've introduced an assortment of remarkable successful marketing campaigns to position the diamond as the preferred stone for wedding (and other) jewelry despite the fact that there are other stones that are rarer and more aesthetically pleasing to many people.
DeBeers control and influence has been slipping as over time more diamond mines have been discovered and opened and also with the introduction of the ability to fabricate diamonds in substantial quantities at economically competitive prices. In fact it's probably cheaper to make diamonds than to dig them up in many cases.
I'm going to go with the theory that people actually think this through when buying. Did you guess your wife's finger size, have her pick or measure it quite carefully for your complicated ring?:-)
I knew her ring size but she picked out the design. Actually was the second ring I bought her as a 15 year anniversary present. The one I originally bought her had stones that were more bulky but it had a band that was easy to resize. She needed something that would fit under latex gloves (for work) and not get so much in the way. We were well aware that adjustments would be difficult so we just got her measured during the purchase to double check.
I don't know if it is still a thing, but a while back I recall seeing that there were Canadian mined diamonds etched with a microscopic polar bear to market as blood-free.
The problem with that is that DeBeers is generally still involved with most diamond sales and any diamond that DeBeers has a hand in is by definition not blood free. Just because they mined some product without funding some evil despot in the process doesn't excuse many decades of reprehensible conduct and shady business practices.
The nice thing with lab made diamonds is that their chemical composition proves that they are conflict free unambiguously. No chain of custody or special marking required to check. You just need a spectrometer or similar test equipment.
Bespoke artisanal diamonds... made in a lab with solar power or whatever.
Exactly. That shouldn't be too hard to sell to the granola crowd and maybe the techies as well as a feature rather than a bug. Personally I think a diamond that was made specifically to my specifications using cool technology is much more interesting than some rock dug out of the ground in a mine where they had to pay a local warlord.
Resizing a ring is trivial both in cost and effort.
That depends on the design of the ring. If it's just a metal band with a single stone then yes it is easy. But some ring designs are very challenging to adjust. My wife's wedding ring has stones all around the perimeter and a clever design so adjusting it's size would be quite difficult. Not impossible but it would probably cost as much as buying a new ring.
In short, diamonds are nice and pretty close to forever, but people ain't and our opinions of the value of diamonds are transient and usually ridiculous.
That's true of a lot of shiny things. Gold elicits a similarly irrational response from people. But most of the market value for decorative diamonds comes from clever marketing and control of distribution by basically one company (DeBeers) with a bit of artificial scarcity thrown in.
(1) Have manufacturing costs declined enough to flood the market?
As I understand it they have been cheap enough for quite some time. I remember studying this topic in grad school over 15 years ago.
(2) Are they deliberately flawing these synthetic diamonds to pass them for the natural thing, since natural diamonds are truly scarce?
You are incorrect that diamonds are particularly scarce. DeBeers has been holding literally vast quantities of diamonds out of circulation to keep artificial scarcity. But diamonds are not particularly rare and we've already mined far more of them than are actually in the market. Technically mined diamonds are scarce because there is a finite quantity of them but the amount available far exceeds current market demand and prices could be dropped substantially.
Actually they are - plenty of studies support the assertion that women won't date down.
There also are plenty of studies which show that is not true. Women date down in socio-economic status routinely. Cripes I could make a good argument that MY wife dated down. She makes more money than I do, comes from a family that is better off, certainly doesn't need me financially and doesn't gain any meaningful status from me. We're together because we want to be and we're hardly an outlier in that regard.
Firstly, you disparage 99.9% of women with that remark (By your standards any woman who desires wealth and power in a partner is shallow)
No YOU disparage women with you insultingly false claim that they are all ("99.9%" in your words) status seeking and only care about wealth and power above all other considerations. And yes anyone who leaves an otherwise happy relationship in pursuit of wealth and/or power IS manifestly shallow. Pretty hard to argue otherwise.
Secondly, I didn't claim that a wife will leave.
Bullshit. You said "If you think your wife loves you, just wait till she is propositioned by a wealthy and powerful man". The implication of your statement is obvious.
You know the type , same molecule, but they rather have "natural" one rather than the "artificial" one , artificial is for many people a scare word, denoting sonething of lesser value
You just have to point out that they almost literally have blood on their hands. Point out the horrifying conditions miners live with, the conflicts, the support for terrorism, etc. It's all in how you spin the marketing. DeBeers understands this. What we need now is a competitor who gets it too.
Personally I'd buy the "pure, conflict free, custom made, tailored to my tastes" diamond over the "dirty, blood stained, rock from the ground" diamond any day of the week.
Disclaimer : i was involved in the process of making artificial diamond so i am definitily biased.
Lab grown are not special, they're not real, they're not unique.
That's a complete crock of shit. Digging a rock out of the ground doesn't make it special. I don't even get the "not real" comment aside from being a bunch of marketing bullshit. It's a diamond chemically no different from any other diamond in any way that actually matters. And they are every bit as unique as a diamond you dig out of the ground and in fact can be made to have specific desired properties.
De Beers says the man-made diamonds will not compete with mined stones. It's so adamant about this that it will not grade them in the traditional way. "We're not grading our lab-grown diamonds because we don't think they deserve to be graded," Cleaver said. "They're all the same."
This is basically an admission that the lab made stones are every bit as good as the ones they dig up so they need to pretend that they are different somehow. Making diamonds in a lab is functionally identical to opening a new diamond mine. It increases supply. DeBeers has had a monopoly on distribution for ages because they controlled the supply of diamonds. They literally keep huge numbers of them out of circulation to prop up prices. The problem for them is that they cannot control supply if anyone can make a diamond so they are trying to create an artificial distinction between dug up diamonds versus lab made ones. If you actually buy this malarkey you are an idiot.
If someone is smart what they will do is label lab made diamonds as "conflict free lab grade pure diamond" as opposed to dirty dug up diamonds so you can be sure that they aren't supporting terrorism, oppression, etc.
That's nice, after reading your post I know for certain that you're an asshole.
Grow up. If you post something that stupid and easily disproved be prepared to take some heat for it. Honestly I still don't know if you are an idiot or a troll so I'm not going to respond after this.
This is your only valid point. I absently didn't think about fuel when I made my post.
If you think that is the only valid point then you don't understand what you are talking about.
I covered that here. "The only obstacles we have are scaling prices down to reasonable levels for civilian ownership of such vehicles"
That claim is preposterously wrong. We don't have the technology nor any plausible means to develop such technology within our lifetime. The physics doesn't work and the economics of it don't work. Unless you have a design for Tony Stark's arc reactor that you are hiding you aren't going to see a flying car any time soon.
I used the Harrier as an example as it can take off and land vertically.
And it was a stupid example. Harrier VTOL technology cannot practically be used elsewhere. It's akin to saying we should start transporting cargo via scaled down Saturn V rockets instead of using cargo ships. If it were economically practical to scale down for civilian use it would have been already.
Roads cost money. Traffic costs money.
The roads already exist and so does the infrastructure to handle them. Whether you understand it or not you are suggesting ripping out a huge portion of that for no apparent economic benefit. If you can actually develop a practical flying car then you can argue with me about the economics of overhauling our entire road system.
I don't think you are aware of how much planes weigh. A fully loaded Cessna weighs 2,550 lb which is the weight of a small car and that's not a heavy plane by any standards.
Seriously, just stop. It's not how much the vehicle weighs. It's how much the vehicle can carry safely and how expensive it is to carry it. A fully loaded Cessna 172 has enough power to get itself aloft along with typically around 600-700lbs of cargo and/or passengers. You can put it over the weight limit with as little as three passengers and a full tank of gas in some circumstances. Even the most basic automobile sold today can safely handle more weight than that and it doesn't have to land at an airport to do it. Nor does a car have to carry around heavy and impractical wings while driving. What magical technology are you imagining that will allow you to make the vehicle robust enough to drive on a road while still remaining airworthy without using up the entire weight budget?
Maintenance isn't that high on small planes.
HAHAHAHA... You haven't ever actually owned a small plane have you? They are stupidly expensive to maintain even for a little two seat Cessna. It's not unusal for them to cost hundreds of dollars per operating hour not including the cost of the vehicle itself. Something that would be a practical flying car would cost considerably more unless you invoke science fiction level advances in our technology.
First, the article doesn't even mention "flying cars".
No but some of the more ridiculous responses did mention flying cars. Flying cars are a stupid idea that needs to be stomped out. Please do try to keep up.
Besides which, every pedant on Slashdot wants to interpret the word "car" in the most inflexible way possible, where "car = automobile". Think instead "smallish simple to operate vehicle for transporting a small number of humans".
Nice attempt to move the goalposts. Define the word "car" to be vague enough to mean whatever idiotic thing you want it to mean. By that logic the a Soyuz capsule is a "flying car". A flying car is a simple thing enough idea. It is vehicle that can both A) fly and B) drive legally on existing roads. Technically vehicles devices do actually exist but they are utterly useless for any reasonably practical purpose and are economic boondoggles.
Maybe Airbus understands a little about physics and thinks the general ideas talked about in the Bloomberg article are worth researching.
Maybe you should read the thread before jumping in without understanding the context of a post. Airbus certainly does understand physics. That doesn't mean certain slashdot readers share that ability.
The Harrier Jump Jet has been around for over half a century. The technology for flying cars is well within reach
Sigh... I don't know if you are trolling or stupid. We do not have any technology (nor any reasonably likely near term technology) for power sources with sufficient power density (power to weight) to enable a usable flying car. If you think any part of that sentence is wrong then you do not adequately understand physics enough to be a part of this conversation.
The Harrier jet in no way shape or form resembles a flying car nor is the technology in a Harrier jet scalable down to enable one. Do you have any idea how big one of these things is? How much fuel it consumes? Do you comprehend how much maintenance there is for such a device? How much infrastructure is required to maintain one? Where do you plan to land it aside from an airport? Why not save money and just buy/rent a plane and a car both of which can do more and cost less? This is not technology that can be scaled down to the size of a family sedan even if we ignore the legion of other problems. Your argument is as absurd as saying we're going to have a moon colony soon because we've managed to have a few men walk there.
The only obstacles we have are scaling prices down to reasonable levels for civilian ownership of such vehicles and figuring out a way to make mass aerial transit not the massive hazard it potentially is.
Ok you are actually retarded if you think it's that simple. Here are just a few of the showstopper problems preventing flying cars. This list isn't even close to complete but every item on it is a showstopper. 1) No power source with adequate power to weight ratio nor any prospect of one 2) No adequately robust navigation/piloting system for aerial transit by non-pilots 3) Very few people are adequately trained pilots 4) No infrastructure for takeoff/landing anywhere except existing airports 5) It's cheaper to have a plane and a car than one that does both 6) A purpose built plane or car will outperform a vehicle that does both 7) No obvious economic problem solved by a flying car 8) Any vehicle light enough to get off the ground is too fragile to endure traveling on the ground 9) Enormous and unresolved liability issues in the event of accidents 10) Cost of fuel will be prohibitive for anyone but the richest of individuals 11) Cost of maintenance will be prohibitive
It would probably cost less, because I tip my human dealers and waitresses, but certainly less "fun". with robots. If I want creepy animatronics, I can go to a Disney park,
That is a valid opinion but the question would be how many people share that opinion. Slot machines don't involve a person and they are hugely popular. I could see plenty of people wanting to play blackjack or poker and not caring at all if there is a human dealer. I know I wouldn't give a shit.
I also wonder how a robodealer would figure out I was counting cards with multiple decks....
The dealer probably doesn't most of the time unless you are being stupidly obvious about it. It's the eye in the sky that is watching for that.
The simple fact is that they can either get on board with learning to work with automation OR they can eventually watch their jobs go away anyway when the jobs move to someplace with more pliable labor and better automation. It would not be hard for tourists to start going elsewhere if they don't like what they get. If you have a job that can be readily taken by automation then sooner or later it will be. Your only defense against this is to have a skill set that is difficult to automate. Pretending otherwise is like fooling yourself into thinking this internet thing is a fad.
Slashdot Mirror
To be fair, you're comparing a software company to a hardware one.
No I am not. Apple is a software company at its core. No less an authority than Steve Jobs himself has said so publicly. Not a traditional one to be sure but they don't actually make any of the hardware they sell so they by definition cannot be a hardware company. A company is what it makes and for all practical purposes the only thing Apple actually makes themselves is software. They design some of the hardware but that's not the same thing.
Then, after a few years of active training, the systems will probably be ready to work on their own.
That will (probably) never happen. More likely what will happen is that they will work in conjunction with the physician and the physician will gradually concern themselves more with results interpretation, management, and treatment. But no doctor is going to just let the machine go do its thing without any sort of oversight.
I think that it's the canary in the coal mine for many medical fields.
I think you are worrying about it more than is justified. My wife is a pathologist so I'm watching this issue closely but so far the net benefit seems to be positive.
Image processing neural nets are getting more powerful and more accessible for hospitals and (more importantly) large hospital networks.
I see little evidence we are danger of them getting powerful enough any time soon to start seriously denting the number of doctors needed. I think they will impact how the doctors do their job (and that's probably good) but mostly in the sense of removing a lot of needless busywork and improving quality of care.
This expands well beyond dermatologists. No reason why similar image processing techniques can't be used in radiology, reducing a health system's need to hire more radiologists. Or echocardiogram and electrocardiogram interpretation, freeing up the time of cardiologists (so less cardiologists need to be hired in the future).
I worked in a radiology clinic about 15 years ago where they were using this sort of tech to help with diagnosis. It helps the radiologist do their job better. It doesn't replace the radiologist. (or pathologist or cardiologist etc) To reduce head count you need to have it have enough of an impact to be a step function. I don't think we are in any real danger of that happening any time soon. Even if we did though it will just change some jobs. My wife is an AP/CP pathologist so instead of looking through a microscope most of the day she might end up looking at a monitor or even reading reports more like a clinical pathologist. That's not a bad thing, it's just different.
I'm no expert, but does issuing more shares not just mean you are more in debt?
No. Debt is a different thing. Shares are not a loan, they are a percentage ownership in the company. When you issue stock for sale you are literally selling a portion of the company. Nothing is being loaned. Debt holders typically get repaid before anyone else. Equity holders typically get paid last.
That's not to say that the new owners won't expect a return on their investment but the expectation is that this will come from company growth without a fixed timeline or cash outlay. Generally speaking equity is usually more expensive than debt because the risk to the investor is higher. Research "cost of capital" if you want to understand more.
Aren't shares essentially taking a mortgage on your company, but you do not even have to pay anything back, beyond empty promises.
No they aren't like a mortgage at all. The new owners will expect a return on their investment, this will come in the form of a growing company profits. If the company doesn't deliver those profits at some point the stock price will plunge and the company will either be sold/liquidated or will be unable to raise additional capital. If the company cannot raise capital and isn't profitable then they will go bankrupt.
Apple, Microsoft and Facebook have achieved their huge "market cap" simply by issuing more shares of stock than anyone else -- billions of shares.
Umm, you do realize that if you put more shares out they will be worth less individually, right? The share price isn't fixed so you don't get a bigger market cap just by issuing more shares. There has to be demand for the shares regardless of the number of them. Berkshire Hathaway famously hasn't split their shares for a long time so each share is worth tens of thousands of dollars. You can have the same market cap with fewer shares with a higher value or more shares with a lesser value. It's literally identical to saying a $20 bill is identical in value to two $10 bills. It's only the total value that matters.
Then I learned that Apple reported net income of 50B annually recently.
They've been around that number for the last three years. Please do keep up.
Apparently, marketing works.
Companies don't get to Apple's size without provide a shit ton of value to customers. Might not be value to you but it definitely is value to a lot of people and it sure as shit isn't just marketing.
They probably have the highest markup margin in tech.
No they do not. It's not at all uncommon for software companies to have higher margins than Apple. Microsoft routinely has higher net margins than Apple. On average around 5% higher which is a HUGE amount.
"AI better at something" is likely to become very common., in many fields.
But that doesn't always mean what people think it means. In this case for instance it doesn't matter if the AI is marginally better at guessing whether a lesion is melanoma from a picture because that isn't how melanoma is actually diagnosed. If the doctor even suspects a small chance of melanoma they are going to biopsy the tissue and send it to pathology where the pathologist tells them what it really is to the best of out knowledge. No dermatologist is going to treat a melanoma without a biopsy. The only important detail here is that the number of false negatives be as small as possible. When it doubt, cut it out. There should be some amount of false positives if the doctor is doing his job correctly. Obviously we want as few of these as possible but it's not the critical issue.
Technology like this isn't going to replace dermatologists. It's just going to become a supplemental tool to help ensure consistency of care and to help ensure more accurate results.
Dermatologists don't diagnose melanoma on the skin. They might suspect melanoma but what they do is biopsy the sample and send it to pathology where they can run a variety of tests (genetic markers, stains, etc) and look at the tissue morphology carefully under a microscope. The pathologist then gives an evaluation of the probability that this is indeed a malignancy. Melanoma's are sneaky and can resemble a wide variety of other conditions, many of them benign and there is no dermatologists or AI system that can get them right 100% of the time. Why? There is NO definitive test for all forms of melanoma nor is there any definitive criteria. In many cases it is just a probabilistic guess as to how likely this is to be melanoma or any other lesion. There is an alarming amount of gestalt in many of the diagnosis.
So the dermatologist doesn't have to be right, they just have to not have a false negative and cut out an adequate amount of tissue to give the pathologist a chance to make a diagnosis. They SHOULD be cutting out lesions that turn out to not be melanoma. So it doesn't matter if the AI is slightly better at guessing whether a lesion is melanoma or not on the skin because if the doctor even suspects it might be melanoma he/she should be biopsying the lesion anyway. Neither the doctor nor the AI actually knows what it is until pathology has a chance to look at it.
(Source: my wife is a dermatopathologist and does this stuff for a living)
The obvious conclusion is therefore not to train more doctors to correctly diagnose melanomas but to have them photograph parts of your body and submit the pictures to an IT system which will in turn deliver a diagnosis.
No visual IT system nor any doctor can definitively diagnose a melanoma on the skin. They can have a strong suspicion and a good dermatologist will be right most of the time but they cannot be certain in all but the most obvious of cases. Even then the tissue has to be biopsied and sent to pathology for any sort of definitive diagnosis. There they have stains, genetic markers and other tools to figure out what is growing on the patient. Furthermore a definitive diagnosis is not always possible because we have no unambiguous test for all forms of melanoma nor do we even have an unambiguous set of criteria in some cases. There is an alarming amount of gestalt in the process. Some are fairly straightforward and others are nigh impossible to diagnose. Melanoma is challenging because it can appear in a variety of forms because of it's genetic origins. It can look near indistinguishable from many other types of lesions and the genetic tests and stains and other tools we have don't always give a clear answer.
The simple fact is that in many cases a diagnosis is really just an informed guess based on the probabilities. We're saying effectively that there is an X% chance that this is melanoma so we should treat it as if it is just to be safe.
Source: my wife is a dematopathologist so I get to hear about all this stuff daily.
Years of schooling only to be replaced by a tech and AI (if a tech is even needed for imaging)...
That's like arguing that a code library and compiler can replace a programmer. It might change the tasks they have to deal with but it doesn't eliminate the job. If you think something like this is going to replace dermatologists you have no idea what they actually do.
Where can I send my dick pics... I mean epidermal selfies?
I think this says everything we need to know about you.
When an AI makes a mistake, every single system connected to the network might learn from it and know better for next time.
You know the converse is true as well. If they make a mistake ALL the machines will make the same mistake until it is corrected. With a human doctor that isn't generally true.
So many people want to challenge the scarcity. I feel I must respond that large diamonds are rare and do have legitimate scarcity value.
Not when you can fabricate one in a lab any time you want from one of the most abundant elements in the universe. Diamonds are only scarce if one actually gives a shit about the fact that they were dug out of the ground. Such irrational concerns are pretty hard to justify. Hence DeBeer's frantic efforts to try to devalue "synthetic" diamonds through marketing scare tactics. This is ultimately likely to only be a delaying tactic since this sort of marketing BS tends to fall apart eventually in the relentless face of supply and demand.
However I also agree that the market value of diamonds is manipulated, though I think that most of the manipulation is psychological, easily summarized by the "Diamonds are forever" slogan.
Oh it's multi level manipulation. It originates out of the fact that DeBeers for a long time basically held a de-facto monopoly on the diamond trade and they still are a big player with about 35% of the rough diamond market. They also did/do hold large reserves of diamonds out of circulation to manipulate market prices. And they've introduced an assortment of remarkable successful marketing campaigns to position the diamond as the preferred stone for wedding (and other) jewelry despite the fact that there are other stones that are rarer and more aesthetically pleasing to many people.
DeBeers control and influence has been slipping as over time more diamond mines have been discovered and opened and also with the introduction of the ability to fabricate diamonds in substantial quantities at economically competitive prices. In fact it's probably cheaper to make diamonds than to dig them up in many cases.
I'm going to go with the theory that people actually think this through when buying. Did you guess your wife's finger size, have her pick or measure it quite carefully for your complicated ring? :-)
I knew her ring size but she picked out the design. Actually was the second ring I bought her as a 15 year anniversary present. The one I originally bought her had stones that were more bulky but it had a band that was easy to resize. She needed something that would fit under latex gloves (for work) and not get so much in the way. We were well aware that adjustments would be difficult so we just got her measured during the purchase to double check.
I don't know if it is still a thing, but a while back I recall seeing that there were Canadian mined diamonds etched with a microscopic polar bear to market as blood-free.
The problem with that is that DeBeers is generally still involved with most diamond sales and any diamond that DeBeers has a hand in is by definition not blood free. Just because they mined some product without funding some evil despot in the process doesn't excuse many decades of reprehensible conduct and shady business practices.
The nice thing with lab made diamonds is that their chemical composition proves that they are conflict free unambiguously. No chain of custody or special marking required to check. You just need a spectrometer or similar test equipment.
Bespoke artisanal diamonds... made in a lab with solar power or whatever.
Exactly. That shouldn't be too hard to sell to the granola crowd and maybe the techies as well as a feature rather than a bug. Personally I think a diamond that was made specifically to my specifications using cool technology is much more interesting than some rock dug out of the ground in a mine where they had to pay a local warlord.
Resizing a ring is trivial both in cost and effort.
That depends on the design of the ring. If it's just a metal band with a single stone then yes it is easy. But some ring designs are very challenging to adjust. My wife's wedding ring has stones all around the perimeter and a clever design so adjusting it's size would be quite difficult. Not impossible but it would probably cost as much as buying a new ring.
In short, diamonds are nice and pretty close to forever, but people ain't and our opinions of the value of diamonds are transient and usually ridiculous.
That's true of a lot of shiny things. Gold elicits a similarly irrational response from people. But most of the market value for decorative diamonds comes from clever marketing and control of distribution by basically one company (DeBeers) with a bit of artificial scarcity thrown in.
(1) Have manufacturing costs declined enough to flood the market?
As I understand it they have been cheap enough for quite some time. I remember studying this topic in grad school over 15 years ago.
(2) Are they deliberately flawing these synthetic diamonds to pass them for the natural thing, since natural diamonds are truly scarce?
You are incorrect that diamonds are particularly scarce. DeBeers has been holding literally vast quantities of diamonds out of circulation to keep artificial scarcity. But diamonds are not particularly rare and we've already mined far more of them than are actually in the market. Technically mined diamonds are scarce because there is a finite quantity of them but the amount available far exceeds current market demand and prices could be dropped substantially.
Actually they are - plenty of studies support the assertion that women won't date down.
There also are plenty of studies which show that is not true. Women date down in socio-economic status routinely. Cripes I could make a good argument that MY wife dated down. She makes more money than I do, comes from a family that is better off, certainly doesn't need me financially and doesn't gain any meaningful status from me. We're together because we want to be and we're hardly an outlier in that regard.
Firstly, you disparage 99.9% of women with that remark (By your standards any woman who desires wealth and power in a partner is shallow)
No YOU disparage women with you insultingly false claim that they are all ("99.9%" in your words) status seeking and only care about wealth and power above all other considerations. And yes anyone who leaves an otherwise happy relationship in pursuit of wealth and/or power IS manifestly shallow. Pretty hard to argue otherwise.
Secondly, I didn't claim that a wife will leave.
Bullshit. You said "If you think your wife loves you, just wait till she is propositioned by a wealthy and powerful man". The implication of your statement is obvious.
Shallow women chase men with wealth.
FTFY. And shallow men chase women with implants so let's not pretend that men have any moral high ground here.
The ones that don't are outliers.
Actually they aren't. Most people chase wealth, men and women. The only difference is in the tactics employed.
If you think your wife loves you, just wait till she is propositioned by a wealthy and powerful man. We're all only human.
If you marry such a shallow cunt you deserve to have her leave you.
You know the type , same molecule, but they rather have "natural" one rather than the "artificial" one , artificial is for many people a scare word, denoting sonething of lesser value
You just have to point out that they almost literally have blood on their hands. Point out the horrifying conditions miners live with, the conflicts, the support for terrorism, etc. It's all in how you spin the marketing. DeBeers understands this. What we need now is a competitor who gets it too.
Personally I'd buy the "pure, conflict free, custom made, tailored to my tastes" diamond over the "dirty, blood stained, rock from the ground" diamond any day of the week.
Disclaimer : i was involved in the process of making artificial diamond so i am definitily biased.
Very cool.
Lab grown are not special, they're not real, they're not unique.
That's a complete crock of shit. Digging a rock out of the ground doesn't make it special. I don't even get the "not real" comment aside from being a bunch of marketing bullshit. It's a diamond chemically no different from any other diamond in any way that actually matters. And they are every bit as unique as a diamond you dig out of the ground and in fact can be made to have specific desired properties.
De Beers says the man-made diamonds will not compete with mined stones. It's so adamant about this that it will not grade them in the traditional way. "We're not grading our lab-grown diamonds because we don't think they deserve to be graded," Cleaver said. "They're all the same."
This is basically an admission that the lab made stones are every bit as good as the ones they dig up so they need to pretend that they are different somehow. Making diamonds in a lab is functionally identical to opening a new diamond mine. It increases supply. DeBeers has had a monopoly on distribution for ages because they controlled the supply of diamonds. They literally keep huge numbers of them out of circulation to prop up prices. The problem for them is that they cannot control supply if anyone can make a diamond so they are trying to create an artificial distinction between dug up diamonds versus lab made ones. If you actually buy this malarkey you are an idiot.
If someone is smart what they will do is label lab made diamonds as "conflict free lab grade pure diamond" as opposed to dirty dug up diamonds so you can be sure that they aren't supporting terrorism, oppression, etc.
That's nice, after reading your post I know for certain that you're an asshole.
Grow up. If you post something that stupid and easily disproved be prepared to take some heat for it. Honestly I still don't know if you are an idiot or a troll so I'm not going to respond after this.
This is your only valid point. I absently didn't think about fuel when I made my post.
If you think that is the only valid point then you don't understand what you are talking about.
I covered that here. "The only obstacles we have are scaling prices down to reasonable levels for civilian ownership of such vehicles"
That claim is preposterously wrong. We don't have the technology nor any plausible means to develop such technology within our lifetime. The physics doesn't work and the economics of it don't work. Unless you have a design for Tony Stark's arc reactor that you are hiding you aren't going to see a flying car any time soon.
I used the Harrier as an example as it can take off and land vertically.
And it was a stupid example. Harrier VTOL technology cannot practically be used elsewhere. It's akin to saying we should start transporting cargo via scaled down Saturn V rockets instead of using cargo ships. If it were economically practical to scale down for civilian use it would have been already.
Roads cost money. Traffic costs money.
The roads already exist and so does the infrastructure to handle them. Whether you understand it or not you are suggesting ripping out a huge portion of that for no apparent economic benefit. If you can actually develop a practical flying car then you can argue with me about the economics of overhauling our entire road system.
I don't think you are aware of how much planes weigh. A fully loaded Cessna weighs 2,550 lb which is the weight of a small car and that's not a heavy plane by any standards.
Seriously, just stop. It's not how much the vehicle weighs. It's how much the vehicle can carry safely and how expensive it is to carry it. A fully loaded Cessna 172 has enough power to get itself aloft along with typically around 600-700lbs of cargo and/or passengers. You can put it over the weight limit with as little as three passengers and a full tank of gas in some circumstances. Even the most basic automobile sold today can safely handle more weight than that and it doesn't have to land at an airport to do it. Nor does a car have to carry around heavy and impractical wings while driving. What magical technology are you imagining that will allow you to make the vehicle robust enough to drive on a road while still remaining airworthy without using up the entire weight budget?
Maintenance isn't that high on small planes.
HAHAHAHA... You haven't ever actually owned a small plane have you? They are stupidly expensive to maintain even for a little two seat Cessna. It's not unusal for them to cost hundreds of dollars per operating hour not including the cost of the vehicle itself. Something that would be a practical flying car would cost considerably more unless you invoke science fiction level advances in our technology.
First, the article doesn't even mention "flying cars".
No but some of the more ridiculous responses did mention flying cars. Flying cars are a stupid idea that needs to be stomped out. Please do try to keep up.
Besides which, every pedant on Slashdot wants to interpret the word "car" in the most inflexible way possible, where "car = automobile". Think instead "smallish simple to operate vehicle for transporting a small number of humans".
Nice attempt to move the goalposts. Define the word "car" to be vague enough to mean whatever idiotic thing you want it to mean. By that logic the a Soyuz capsule is a "flying car". A flying car is a simple thing enough idea. It is vehicle that can both A) fly and B) drive legally on existing roads. Technically vehicles devices do actually exist but they are utterly useless for any reasonably practical purpose and are economic boondoggles.
Maybe Airbus understands a little about physics and thinks the general ideas talked about in the Bloomberg article are worth researching.
Maybe you should read the thread before jumping in without understanding the context of a post. Airbus certainly does understand physics. That doesn't mean certain slashdot readers share that ability.
The Harrier Jump Jet has been around for over half a century. The technology for flying cars is well within reach
Sigh... I don't know if you are trolling or stupid. We do not have any technology (nor any reasonably likely near term technology) for power sources with sufficient power density (power to weight) to enable a usable flying car. If you think any part of that sentence is wrong then you do not adequately understand physics enough to be a part of this conversation.
The Harrier jet in no way shape or form resembles a flying car nor is the technology in a Harrier jet scalable down to enable one. Do you have any idea how big one of these things is? How much fuel it consumes? Do you comprehend how much maintenance there is for such a device? How much infrastructure is required to maintain one? Where do you plan to land it aside from an airport? Why not save money and just buy/rent a plane and a car both of which can do more and cost less? This is not technology that can be scaled down to the size of a family sedan even if we ignore the legion of other problems. Your argument is as absurd as saying we're going to have a moon colony soon because we've managed to have a few men walk there.
The only obstacles we have are scaling prices down to reasonable levels for civilian ownership of such vehicles and figuring out a way to make mass aerial transit not the massive hazard it potentially is.
Ok you are actually retarded if you think it's that simple. Here are just a few of the showstopper problems preventing flying cars. This list isn't even close to complete but every item on it is a showstopper.
1) No power source with adequate power to weight ratio nor any prospect of one
2) No adequately robust navigation/piloting system for aerial transit by non-pilots
3) Very few people are adequately trained pilots
4) No infrastructure for takeoff/landing anywhere except existing airports
5) It's cheaper to have a plane and a car than one that does both
6) A purpose built plane or car will outperform a vehicle that does both
7) No obvious economic problem solved by a flying car
8) Any vehicle light enough to get off the ground is too fragile to endure traveling on the ground
9) Enormous and unresolved liability issues in the event of accidents
10) Cost of fuel will be prohibitive for anyone but the richest of individuals
11) Cost of maintenance will be prohibitive
It would probably cost less, because I tip my human dealers and waitresses, but certainly less "fun". with robots. If I want creepy animatronics, I can go to a Disney park,
That is a valid opinion but the question would be how many people share that opinion. Slot machines don't involve a person and they are hugely popular. I could see plenty of people wanting to play blackjack or poker and not caring at all if there is a human dealer. I know I wouldn't give a shit.
I also wonder how a robodealer would figure out I was counting cards with multiple decks....
The dealer probably doesn't most of the time unless you are being stupidly obvious about it. It's the eye in the sky that is watching for that.
The simple fact is that they can either get on board with learning to work with automation OR they can eventually watch their jobs go away anyway when the jobs move to someplace with more pliable labor and better automation. It would not be hard for tourists to start going elsewhere if they don't like what they get. If you have a job that can be readily taken by automation then sooner or later it will be. Your only defense against this is to have a skill set that is difficult to automate. Pretending otherwise is like fooling yourself into thinking this internet thing is a fad.