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Thats nothing compared to the work in China right now. In ten or 20 years, the west could be permanently behind. From https://www.independent.ie/business/techn

Thats nothing compared to the work in China right now. In ten or 20 years, the west could be permanently behind. From https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/data-sharing-giving-chinese-ai-firms-a-head-start-36039570.html https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/data-sharing-... > DeepMind, the AI lab of Google's Alphabet, has laboured for nearly two years to access medical records... Last month, the top UK privacy watchdog declared the trial violates British data-protection laws, throwing its future into question. > Contrast that with how officials handled a project in Fuzhou... The summit involved a vast handover of data. At the press conference, city officials shared 80 exabytes worth of heart ultrasound videos, according to one company that participated. With the massive data set, some of the companies were tasked with building an AI tool that could identify heart disease, ideally at rates above medical experts. They were asked to turn it around by the autumn.

734786710934 8y ago
There's going to be a Sputnik moment in the next decade or two where The West wakes up to how far it's fallen behind in this area.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  Could the West not take data from China in the same way they've taken data from the West to get ahead (arguing the capability, not the morality)?
- bduerst 8y ago
  Funny, I've heard AlphaGo referred to as the Sputnik moment for China.
  - chocolatebunny 8y ago
    Any chance you have a source for that? AlphaGo seemed like a monumental achievement but I didn't hear anything specifically China related.
    - bduerst 8y ago
      https://www.google.com/search?q=alphago+"sputnik" https://www.google.com/search?q=alphago+"sputnik"
nwhatt 8y ago
Or is it a matter of time until a high-enough ranking cadre gets his medical records leaked and the Chinese government enacts their own form of HIPAA.
- whowhowhowhowho 8y ago
  https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2076397 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2076397
SkyPuncher 8y ago
> Thats nothing compared to the work in China right now. In ten or 20 years, the west could be permanently behind. That's a completely acceptable trade off to me. China and the west have different perspectives on how users privacy should be handled.
- paulsutter 8y ago
  In the west we have total surveillance of personal communications, but we can't datamine anonymized health information. Under what ideology does that make sense?
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    There's a difference between having total surveillance and that surveillance being legal and generally approved of by the masses.
  - gautamdivgi 8y ago
    Under the ideology that medical data in any form is the property of the patient and not an institution or government. I get it it’s a catch-22 situation. Without data there are no meaningful statistics. But are those who data is used to arrive at diagnostics and cures provided any benefit? I don’t think so - change that and you may see an uptick in data sharing.
- umeshunni 8y ago
  So the west would rather than millions die from cancer than make health information more accessible to researchers.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
    Yes, because throwing away patient privacy in the name of hopefully maybe someday being able to get better treatment is not a trade-off that we are willing to make.
doctorpangloss 8y ago
It’s not a free country, with no free press. In what universe could a lack of regulation on how health data is used in China wind up a net positive for the average Chinese? For example, what if they augmented their social scoring system (a profoundly bullshit, evil enterprise) with this health data, and decide that you shouldn’t get whatever because your health data says so? What if the health data they choose to harass you with is just strongly correlated with being Uighur? Also, it’s pretty presumptive that this data is actually valuable for the diagnostic task it’s claimed for. Biotech companies die all the time due to someone’s presumptions.
cepp 8y ago
A company that I interviewed with in Shenzhen mentioned to me that they had acquired a contract with a central hospital there allowing for them to acquire patient data in real time. This was in service of developing DL algorithms for treatment and prognosis. The amount of data they are exposed to is amazing and certainly puts them at a huge advantage to even their biggest competitor in the West.
ryandrake 8y ago
One person’s notion of “ahead” may not match another’s. You could also say that China’s lack of data protection laws and norms puts them way behind the West in terms of user privacy. Sure, “the West” is inconsistent in its protection of people’s data. There is no Gold Standard country or regulation to point to. But we are still unarguably way ahead of China in this regard.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- m_ke 8y ago
  He's clearly not talking about user privacy. Chinese companies and government will have access to billions of medical records to train their algorithms on while their western counterparts are squabbling with individual hospitals over access to a few thousand records. China has the talent, money and data to be the leader in this space.
  - ryandrake 8y ago
    I guess my issue is with the unstated, but negative, connotation of "being behind". If western companies being unable to get their hands on my medical data makes us "behind" then I think it's a good thing to be behind. As part of the West, I am happy to not be a "leader in the space" of AI if being such a leader necessarily requires careless sharing of vast amounts of private data.
    - m_ke 8y ago
      We get to get spied on by Google and Facebook instead. Now those companies are using the money they made by spying on us to get exclusive access to patient data so they can expand their monopolies to healthcare. https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/facebook-healthcare/520786/ https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/facebook-healthcare/5207... https://healthitanalytics.com/news/facebook-nyu-will-use-artificial-intelligence-for-faster-mris https://healthitanalytics.com/news/facebook-nyu-will-use-art... https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/15/uk-report-warns-deepmind-health-could-gain-excessive-monopoly-power/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/15/uk-report-warns-deepmind-h...
dekhn 8y ago
80 exabytes of heart ultrasounds? I don't believe that.
naveen99 8y ago
Nothing is permanent. Nothing stopping western companies from buying Chinese data. Also Sloan Kettering could be stuck if they already signed contracts promising the data. Google deepmind should just have hospital’s bid for data prices... kind of like for google fiber or amazon headquarters shopping cities.
tedivm 8y ago
The US has specific rules in HIPAA that allow for research, especially when using deidentified datasets. The company I'm working at (based in Berkeley, CA) has almost 400tb of radiology studies- and that's not even counting the data we've found in India. At Google Next just a few weeks ago there were representatives from NIH who were talking about the datasets they are building and making public as well. Point being, I don't see us running behind on this.
sulam 8y ago
I don't think the issue here is so much the data (which is anonymized), but the conflict of interest. I know conflict of interest is par for the course in China, but for the individuals who made the decision that this startup should be given exclusive access to the data to then be given stakes in the startup is clearly a conflict. Doubling that conflict is the fact that they work for a non-profit, which has tax-preferred status and also received a stake in the startup. Let me make an analogy here: I advise several startups and am given shares in those companies in return for my time. A few of them make software or sell solutions that the company I work for could use. At my company I can influence whether or not we use these startups as a vendor. It is clearly unethical for me to be involved in any decision that pertains to a company where I hold an ownership stake. It would also be unethical for me to take an ownership stake after I was involved in a negotiation with those companies. I would disclose and recuse myself from any such decision. That's without adding the extra (legal) wrinkle around non-profit status, which doesn't pertain.
- chriskanan 8y ago
  Where your analogy breaks down is that the company is a spin-out of a hospital lab. This is usually encouraged by academic institutions. For example, at my university, if I develop an algorithm that I want to commercialize then they might encourage me to found a startup. Then, they could take equity in the startup or give an exclusive license to the patent (where I am the inventor) to my startup. Many academic institutions encourage these activities to get research out of academic papers to create products with real world benefit.
- bsder 8y ago
  > I would disclose and recuse myself from any such decision. Disclosure is the key. As long as the people making the decision and cutting the check (investors, board, and officers) are aware of the conflict of interest, they can choose what your involvement should be. For example, if you hire an AI expert as a consultant on evaluating AI companies, it may be with the explicit intent to buy the company for which he works as well as evaluate other companies in the space. This is one way to check people out before making an even bigger commitment. In certain fields, there are so few "experts" that there may be no possibility of avoiding a conflict of interest because everybody is interconnected.
stephencanon 8y ago
Mr. President, we must not allow... a privacy violation gap!
gowld 8y ago
The trouble with Chinese science is that it's so politicized and politics is so corrupted and face-saving that junk science gets officially elevated. "The West" has problems too, but there are still some reputable independent institutions.

734786710934 8y ago

There's going to be a Sputnik moment in the next decade or two where The West wakes up to how far it's fallen behind in this area.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
Could the West not take data from China in the same way they've taken data from the West to get ahead (arguing the capability, not the morality)?
bduerst 8y ago
Funny, I've heard AlphaGo referred to as the Sputnik moment for China.
- chocolatebunny 8y ago
  Any chance you have a source for that? AlphaGo seemed like a monumental achievement but I didn't hear anything specifically China related.
  - bduerst 8y ago
    https://www.google.com/search?q=alphago+"sputnik" https://www.google.com/search?q=alphago+"sputnik"

nwhatt 8y ago

Or is it a matter of time until a high-enough ranking cadre gets his medical records leaked and the Chinese government enacts their own form of HIPAA.

whowhowhowhowho 8y ago
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2076397 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2076397

SkyPuncher 8y ago

> Thats nothing compared to the work in China right now. In ten or 20 years, the west could be permanently behind. That's a completely acceptable trade off to me. China and the west have different perspectives on how users privacy should be handled.

paulsutter 8y ago
In the west we have total surveillance of personal communications, but we can't datamine anonymized health information. Under what ideology does that make sense?
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  There's a difference between having total surveillance and that surveillance being legal and generally approved of by the masses.
- gautamdivgi 8y ago
  Under the ideology that medical data in any form is the property of the patient and not an institution or government. I get it it’s a catch-22 situation. Without data there are no meaningful statistics. But are those who data is used to arrive at diagnostics and cures provided any benefit? I don’t think so - change that and you may see an uptick in data sharing.
umeshunni 8y ago
So the west would rather than millions die from cancer than make health information more accessible to researchers.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  Yes, because throwing away patient privacy in the name of hopefully maybe someday being able to get better treatment is not a trade-off that we are willing to make.

doctorpangloss 8y ago

It’s not a free country, with no free press. In what universe could a lack of regulation on how health data is used in China wind up a net positive for the average Chinese? For example, what if they augmented their social scoring system (a profoundly bullshit, evil enterprise) with this health data, and decide that you shouldn’t get whatever because your health data says so? What if the health data they choose to harass you with is just strongly correlated with being Uighur? Also, it’s pretty presumptive that this data is actually valuable for the diagnostic task it’s claimed for. Biotech companies die all the time due to someone’s presumptions.

cepp 8y ago

A company that I interviewed with in Shenzhen mentioned to me that they had acquired a contract with a central hospital there allowing for them to acquire patient data in real time. This was in service of developing DL algorithms for treatment and prognosis. The amount of data they are exposed to is amazing and certainly puts them at a huge advantage to even their biggest competitor in the West.

ryandrake 8y ago

One person’s notion of “ahead” may not match another’s. You could also say that China’s lack of data protection laws and norms puts them way behind the West in terms of user privacy. Sure, “the West” is inconsistent in its protection of people’s data. There is no Gold Standard country or regulation to point to. But we are still unarguably way ahead of China in this regard.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
m_ke 8y ago
He's clearly not talking about user privacy. Chinese companies and government will have access to billions of medical records to train their algorithms on while their western counterparts are squabbling with individual hospitals over access to a few thousand records. China has the talent, money and data to be the leader in this space.
- ryandrake 8y ago
  I guess my issue is with the unstated, but negative, connotation of "being behind". If western companies being unable to get their hands on my medical data makes us "behind" then I think it's a good thing to be behind. As part of the West, I am happy to not be a "leader in the space" of AI if being such a leader necessarily requires careless sharing of vast amounts of private data.
  - m_ke 8y ago
    We get to get spied on by Google and Facebook instead. Now those companies are using the money they made by spying on us to get exclusive access to patient data so they can expand their monopolies to healthcare. https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/facebook-healthcare/520786/ https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/facebook-healthcare/5207... https://healthitanalytics.com/news/facebook-nyu-will-use-artificial-intelligence-for-faster-mris https://healthitanalytics.com/news/facebook-nyu-will-use-art... https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/15/uk-report-warns-deepmind-health-could-gain-excessive-monopoly-power/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/15/uk-report-warns-deepmind-h...

dekhn 8y ago

80 exabytes of heart ultrasounds? I don't believe that.

naveen99 8y ago

Nothing is permanent. Nothing stopping western companies from buying Chinese data. Also Sloan Kettering could be stuck if they already signed contracts promising the data. Google deepmind should just have hospital’s bid for data prices... kind of like for google fiber or amazon headquarters shopping cities.

tedivm 8y ago

The US has specific rules in HIPAA that allow for research, especially when using deidentified datasets. The company I'm working at (based in Berkeley, CA) has almost 400tb of radiology studies- and that's not even counting the data we've found in India. At Google Next just a few weeks ago there were representatives from NIH who were talking about the datasets they are building and making public as well. Point being, I don't see us running behind on this.

sulam 8y ago

I don't think the issue here is so much the data (which is anonymized), but the conflict of interest. I know conflict of interest is par for the course in China, but for the individuals who made the decision that this startup should be given exclusive access to the data to then be given stakes in the startup is clearly a conflict. Doubling that conflict is the fact that they work for a non-profit, which has tax-preferred status and also received a stake in the startup. Let me make an analogy here: I advise several startups and am given shares in those companies in return for my time. A few of them make software or sell solutions that the company I work for could use. At my company I can influence whether or not we use these startups as a vendor. It is clearly unethical for me to be involved in any decision that pertains to a company where I hold an ownership stake. It would also be unethical for me to take an ownership stake after I was involved in a negotiation with those companies. I would disclose and recuse myself from any such decision. That's without adding the extra (legal) wrinkle around non-profit status, which doesn't pertain.

chriskanan 8y ago
Where your analogy breaks down is that the company is a spin-out of a hospital lab. This is usually encouraged by academic institutions. For example, at my university, if I develop an algorithm that I want to commercialize then they might encourage me to found a startup. Then, they could take equity in the startup or give an exclusive license to the patent (where I am the inventor) to my startup. Many academic institutions encourage these activities to get research out of academic papers to create products with real world benefit.
bsder 8y ago
> I would disclose and recuse myself from any such decision. Disclosure is the key. As long as the people making the decision and cutting the check (investors, board, and officers) are aware of the conflict of interest, they can choose what your involvement should be. For example, if you hire an AI expert as a consultant on evaluating AI companies, it may be with the explicit intent to buy the company for which he works as well as evaluate other companies in the space. This is one way to check people out before making an even bigger commitment. In certain fields, there are so few "experts" that there may be no possibility of avoiding a conflict of interest because everybody is interconnected.

stephencanon 8y ago

Mr. President, we must not allow... a privacy violation gap!

gowld 8y ago

The trouble with Chinese science is that it's so politicized and politics is so corrupted and face-saving that junk science gets officially elevated. "The West" has problems too, but there are still some reputable independent institutions.