We’ve had multiple discussions about AI and safety and just wanted to share an AI fail I came across today.
My dad had a heart scan this week that used the imaging agent, Cardiolite® (he’s fine, BTW). I always get a kick out of telling people who get these scans that it was co-invented by a friend and colleague of mine, Alan Davison, who was also a member of my thesis committee. And a great guy, may he rest in peace.
I wanted to send my dad some links about the drug or development if I could, so I opened up Google and searched on “cardiolite”. Boy, did the AI overview throw me for a loop:
AI Overview
Cardiolite, also known as a thallium scan, is a nuclear medicine scan that uses a radioactive tracer to show how well blood flows to the heart. It can help detect coronary artery disease and assess heart function.
But Cardiolite DOES NOT contain thallium. The only reason I caught that is because I already knew all about it from Alan and personal experience. Cardiolite is a coordination complex containing a metastable isotope of technetium, Tc99-m. The AI summary did say technetium later on, though.
I got to wondering how the AI could have screwed that up so badly. Luckily, Google is kind enough to show you the source for its AI summary and the very first one listed was from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada which has an article (currently) titled "Thallium or Cardiolite scan” which (currently) reads:
What is a thallium scan or a cardiolite scan?
A thallium (or cardiolite) scan uses a radioactive tracer to see how much blood is reaching different parts of your heart. These tests are the more common forms of tests called nuclear medicine scans. You may also hear them called:
thallium myocardial imaging
cold spot imaging
myocardial perfusion imaging
thallium scintigraphy.
Ah, so now I see how this happened. There are other older (apparently inferior) nuclear heart imaging agents based on thallium. The Canadian article came from an authoritative source as determined by Google’s proprietary page rank algorithm, and the article is poorly worded or ambiguous at best. If you read the above, I think any casual reader with no knowledge about the subject would mistakenly assume Cardiolite is based on thallium.
So, garbage in, garbage out as they say. Your outputs generally can’t be any better than your inputs. [insert biting current events/social commentary here].
Best wishes,
Rob Toreki
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