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This seems like a pretty useless study as they don't collect any results from human doctors, therefore there is nothing to compare their GPT-4V results to.


Instead of comparing against some "average doctor", they used a few doctors as "source of truth"

> All images were evaluated by two senior surgical residents (K.R.A, H.S.) and a board-certified internal medicine physician (A.T.). ECGs and clinical photos of dermatologic conditions were additionally evaluated by a board-certified cardiac electrophysiologist (A.H.) and dermatologist (A.C.), respectively


I think the parent comment was referring to something else.

In the paper the tasks are only completed by GPT-4V. For a valid scientific investigation, there should be a control set completed by e.g. qualified doctors. When the panel of experts does their evaluation, they should rate both sets of responses so that the difference in score can be compared in the paper.


Agreed. Those are different evaluations (is what I meant by "Instead of comparing against"). The paper cannot conclude that "doctors are better/more correct"

It assumes that "here are 5 doctors which are always correct". Then measures GPT's correctness against them.


Gave them my DNA last year, am not tech illiterate. It was cool to see the results, though not life-changing. I don't regret the decision - I don't understand why I should care that my DNA sequence is on a shady website somewhere. I don't understand the threat model people have here - how will my life be negatively impacted by this?


> how will my life be negatively impacted by this?

Your would-be future employers may reject you because of this data. Why hire someone with a higher risk of certain diseases or disables? It'd be illegal, but companies don't care about breaking the law if it's profitable and it'd basically take a whistleblower for anyone to know it happened. They certainly won't tell you that's why you weren't hired.

You could be denied housing or be targeted by extremists. More likely though, you'll be targeted by pharmaceutical companies. If the police didn't already have a copy of your DNA on file you might now have a place in every police line up, in any state in the US, for every crime committed where DNA evidence is collected. You could get wrongly flagged as a match through human error or statistics but either way it'll be on you to hire the lawyer who will have to prove your innocence.

We're moving toward a digital caste system (several really) where the data governments and corporations have on you will determine what you're allowed to do, how much you'll pay for things, and what opportunities you'll have. Every scrap of data you surrender will be used against you by anyone willing to pay for it, used in whatever way they think will benefit them, at any time, and you'll probably never even realize what happened. Just like right now, where companies don't tell you that they used your personal data to determine how long to leave you on hold. There's no telling what kinds of harms this could bring you, and there's no taking your data back to prevent any of it either.

I hope that data never comes back to haunt you. I'd sure hate to need to count on that never happening though.


This seems pretty far fetched.

Do you really think a judge would allow a guilty verdict based on stolen genetic data obtained from a hacker?

Do you really think braindead landlords and HR people would make decisions based on Promethease or whatever future tool replaces it?

Monetarily the genetic data is marginally valuable at best, which is the same reasons 23andme revenue comes almost entirely from novelty-seeking consumers rather than industry.


> Do you really think a judge would allow a guilty verdict based on stolen genetic data obtained from a hacker?

The judge won't have any idea how the innocent person's data got entered into the government's DNA database. The same way that judges doesn't care how police got your fingerprints on file (They got mine when I was in grade school. Teachers lined all the kids up in the hallway and the police fingerprinted us all. They told us it was in case we were kidnapped.). The judge cares about how the DNA was collected at the scene of the crime. It's enough that it matched DNA in the government's database. Even if it was discovered that the DNA came from 23andme's data I doubt they would care.

> Do you really think braindead landlords and HR people would make decisions based on Promethease or whatever future tool replaces it?

They already perform illegal background checks on employees and renters. (see https://money.cnn.com/2014/04/09/pf/data-brokers-ftc/index.h...). Whatever interesting data can be extracted from the DNA that was leaked will be added to the dossiers data brokers have on the victims.


> This seems pretty far fetched.

At the begin of Hitler's reign, the Nazis started to ask people at many occasions for so-called "Ariernachweis" papers. Those were collections of documents to show that someones ancestors were pure according to their race theory. Many people didn't question this at the beginning. Later that data was used to round up minorities, i.e. to commit the wellknown atrocities.

Once data is centrally collected, you cannot know for which future purposes it'll be used. So, the question with regards to companies like 23andme should be: Do you trust the current owners, all future owners, and current and future business partners to not misuse and safeguard your DNA data?

> Monetarily the genetic data is marginally valuable at best Tell that to big pharma, health insurers, adoption agencies, dating sites, and companies that produce addictive products for consumers.

> Do you really think braindead landlords and HR people would make decisions based on Promethease They have shown to make decisions based on DEI declarations. I rest my case.


> Do you really think braindead landlords and HR people

Maybe that part is far fetched. But insurance people will make user off it I'm sure. By letting this data out there you might be opting in to higher costs, or hassle getting insurance at all, that way.


You convinced me that, as I was already suspecting, there is no more risk in having your dna public than, for instance, having a picture of you on the internet. Arguably, even less.


"no more risk" is an odd way to frame it. Its all compounded. Having a pic of yourself online is a risk. Having your DNA leaked a risk. Carrying a cell phone is a risk. Using Google is a risk. The more risks you take you more likely you are to get screwed over.

It doesn't really matter if you're the guy who gets arrested for riding his bike (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike...) or the guy who gets arrested because of his DNA (https://www.science.org/content/article/forensics-gone-wrong...) or the guy who gets arrested due to facial recognition (https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/29/tech/nijeer-parks-facial-reco...) it's going to suck for you either way. They're all just different types of ammo that will eventually be used against you somehow or other.


You forgot finger prints, photo's, AI, medical history through routine exams, spending habits harvested through CC use and any form of digital banking, living habits analyzed through electric bills, internet activity, auto use, travel, etc.

Your fear is misguided and you have already lost the game.


You seem to be supporting the fact that this is a valid concern. Every piece of data can (and eventually will likely) be used against you at some point. The more data you give up, the more ammo you're handing over to the people today and tomorrow who want to exploit you. DNA contains a ton of data, and it's very different from the data in your utility bills or your GPS history. Keeping your DNA out of the dossiers data brokers keep on you would be a smart move even taking into account how much other data they already have.


The breach affects those related to you and affects you multi-generationally so there’s a lot of time for the impact to materialize. There are strong financial incentives for genetic discrimination on the part of insurers and employers. There are also plenty of fascists are happy as a clam to discriminate against anybody with certain genes.

If there’s any reason not to care, it’s not the lack of impact, it’s the impossibility of securing the data. I could sit here all day and convince you that you should care and then your cousin would get a dna analysis done and that would ultimately make all your caution mostly irrelevant. The only effective way to ensure genetic privacy is a legislative effort to control access to genetic databases, trying to avoid being put in such a database is only going to slow down how fast this happens.


Once they sell it to your insurance company and they deny you some type of coverage for whatever reason.


see, this is where I don't get it. Can you send your material anonymously (burner email, pay in cash/crypto/prepaid debit card)? Then how could they match your DNA to your identity to sell it to insurance companies, etc?


I'm sure that is possible. But what ratio of the public actually would think of doing that?


Ask one of the serial killers now rotting in jail thanks to 23andme!


Was there ever a case of a convict getting caught by their direct DNA being found in one of these databases? I thought all cases where correlated from relatives. Government gets DNA sample, asks the databases: 'who do you know that's a genetic relative of this suspect?' and then they go and interrogate that person's every third cousin. You can't keep your family tree private, your birth certificate is out there. Opting out of 23andMe won't help you here.


A couple. One infamous case was the Golden State Killer[1] case. Though in that case, it was GEDmatch, not 23and me -- similar service, though.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_James_DeAngelo#Investig...


But that’s just it. You now get the 23 and me defence… my DNA data was hacked therefore there’s reasonable doubt the DNA linking me to the murder was synthesized from the 23 and me leak.


The fact that there is so much potential for the use of that information yet we haven't even started putting mechanisms in place to utilize it is what scares the hell out of me. If the threat model is 'to be determined' then especially when the data is being used commercially, for somewhat trivial reasons and without any substantial legal protections then the way to act is 'from my cold, dead, hands'.

Just remember that no matter who in charge you think is neutral or bad or great, things change, attitudes change, shit happens (remember the Patriot Act?)...

It isn't paranoid to say 'I don't trust the future, let's act cautiously instead of frivolously with things that have the potential to be extremely valuable to me, extremely impactful to society, and in which currently sits the greatest unexplored potential of this generation'.


Cool so you going to wear gloves every time you eat out, touch a door, hold a glass etc.? You’re shedding DNA throughout the day. How is that fundamentally different?


If I said I didn't want to go hunting with Dick Cheyney would you ask if I wore a bullet proof vest everywhere I went? When people look before walking into an intersection do you ask them if they erect bollards in front of their house?

But ok. Next time you go in for surgery tell the doc not to wash their hands because you aren't a scaredy cat.

Refusing to willingly take stupid risks is different than trying to live a life without them at all.


I agree, I have had my raw DNA data and all the analysis results publicly available since the day I took the tests. No problems.

https://globatic.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-23andme-full-and-r...


Biometric auth being used more and more every day. Not hard to see requirements or and crime/impersonation in the future. Gattaca is still far off but one step closer than it was.


Someday when DNA synthesis machines have enough write length to be able to synthesize entire human chromosomes, someone with your genome data could clone you without your consent. Even if this takes 50 years to become possible, you still might not want unauthorized clones of you being made using data that you gave up when you were younger.


That's not possible with 23andMe data, they have 640,000 SNPs, not the entire genome/exome/methylome. They have 640k points where the genome is often different from others, but your own genome is 3Gbp long (3,000,000,000 basepairs) with usually a few million SNPs per person. 23andMe has a subset of the diversity in your genome.


That's good to know. In that case, my concern would lie with the physical saliva samples that 23andMe has retained, since they could be comprehensively sequenced later.


That is true! Samples are usually good forever in the freezer. Do they keep all samples?

Running -80C freezers is not cheap! I have 3 -80C freezers in my lab, those large chest-freezers, and each uses 22 kWh per day for a total of 66 kWh per day. Apparently the average US household consumes 29 kWh per day, so we use up 2 houses per day.

Our freezers certainly don't hold the 14 million samples 23andMe supposedly has, more like in the low thousands. They'd need the power-usage of a city to keep all those samples OK!


You can extract the DNA and store that instead - and they already had to that to their analysis in the first place. Far smaller volume than the raw sample.

Storing this for an effectively indefinite amount is not uncommon. I used to work at a clinical genetics lab, and some material had to be stored (by law!) for a whopping 120 years.


As opposed to getting a bit of hair/dead skin from you, they rather hack into some digital system?


You don't hack into the system to obtain the data. You buy it. It's literally the most profitable thing on the planet right now.


I hereby authorize any and all clones anyone ever wants to make out of my full DNA or parts thereof.


Ignorance is bliss.


I picked up his linear algebra book and watched his lectures last year as part of my journey into machine learning. He made me fall in love with math in a way that I never had before, not even during my physics degree. Truly an inspiring teacher and amazing person.


Agree. I’m seriously thinking of starting a GradCert in October thanks to his teaching.


What does this mean for the future of editors like emacs and (neo)vim? Right now the Copilot plugin for Neovim works pretty much the same as the one for VSCode, but as LLMs get integrated more into IDEs and new workflows are built around them, will the old-school editors be able to keep up? I'm a little worried because I just switched from VSCode to Neovim a few months ago!


This could be the dawn of a new day for the old-school editors. Not to start any wars here, but I could never get the hang of Vim, and that's hardly an unusual complaint. But now, free high-quality personalized "tuition" just became economically viable.


Side note, potentially check out vimtutor, or also https://vim-adventures.com/


I'd second the advice to go through vimtutor.

Highly recommended.


Stuff like the Language Server shows that people are interested in making new stuff work well with our old beloved editors. I have faith.


There is a ChatGPT shell for Emacs: https://xenodium.com/chatgpt-shell-available-on-melpa/


It'll be great if they'd build language servers via the language server protocol, that would be editor agnostic.


Github Copilot actually works through the language server protocol already. Document contents are sent to it and it responds with code completions.


Neovim already can’t keep up by itself. The future of vim won’t be as a standalone application, but as a plugin into other IDEs. The support for Neovim and VSCodeVim within VSCode greatly reduces the utility of a standalone app for anything other than edits to very small projects.


vim is a text editor.


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