Would you trust AI to scan your genitals for STIs?

Honestly? Before the AI craze, I'd have said yes, because I believe AIs tailored to do one specific thing can outperform humans. Today? I'd rather not, as I could not let go of the thought that it might be somme shitty model quickly put together by the nephew of the CEO...

Would I trust the accuracy of the output? No, but it might be a decent warning to get tested to make sure. Would I trust a company with pictures of my genitals attached to my identity? Certainly not an AI company.

Short answer, yes.

Finding complex patterns in noisy data is an application that AI is actually well suited for. It still requires human follow-up. Anyway, human experts make mistakes in these areas as well. There is a good chance that a well designed AI could be more accurate.

Locally run AI, yes. Hosted AI, no.

just post your junk on bluesky and crowdsource it.

Honestly? I've leaked pics of those voluntarily, so curiously I'd be a-okay with this one.

Not all AI is an LLM. So yes.

What's the difference between one technology you don't understand (AI engine-assisted ) and another you don't understand (human-staffed radiology laboratory)?

Regardless of whether you (as a patient hopelessly unskilled in diagnosis of any condition) trust the method, you probably have some level of faith in the provider who has selected it. And, while they most likely will choose what is most beneficial to them (cost of providing accurate diagnoses vs. cost of providing less accurate diagnoses), hopefully regulatory oversight and public influence will force them to use whichever is most effective, AI or not.

I wouldn't trust it to tell me if something is or isn't a banana.

I dunno, maybe the diagnosis is fine but the companies that run it are sure to save copies. I can just see databreaches now, "5 million stolen dick picks uploaded to dark web". Complete with labelling of which ones are diseased though, so that's a help.

AI trained to do that job? Sure, yeah. LLM AI? Fuck no.

I’d welcome it.

I could probably teach it a thing or two.

Ok press the start button and slowly scan your penis, asshole and testicles. First apply included wax and pull forcefully and swiftly to remove hair.

no, but not for why you think.

because it's far more effective to scan samples from you than whole organs.

Every passing day we delve deeper into this hole that is a cold technology driven world. Instead we really should be taking the time to share our outbreaks with friends and family.

No

Depends on the specificity and sensitivity of the test. Would have to be damn close to gold standards to justify. Company providing tech would need to be heavily regulated. Could be promising tech for sex workers if sensitivity was decent, but by time skin manifestations are present most of these are fairly far along.

No.

I'm not sure we, as a society, are ready to trust ML models to do things that might affect lives. This is true for self-driving cars and I expect it to be even more true for medicine. In particular, we can't accept ML failures, even when they get to a point where they are statistically less likely than human errors.

I don't know if this is currently true or not, so please don't shoot me for this specific example, but IF we were to have reliable stats that everything else being equal, self-driving cars cause less accidents than humans, a machine error will always be weird and alien and harder for us to justify than a human one.

"He was drinking too much because his partner left him", "she was suffering from a health condition and had an episode while driving"... we have the illusion that we understand humans and (to an extent) that this understanding helps us predict who we can trust not to drive us to our death or not to misdiagnose some STI and have our genitals wither. But machines? Even if they were 20% more reliable than humans, how would we know which ones we can trust?

I don't think the app in the picture is driven by AI. Seems like a catalogue of questions. Probably to assess some situation by some standard procedure. I'd trust that. Regarding the AI apps mentioned below: I wouldn't trust them at all. If my private parts start itching and I can't make sense of it, I'd go to the doctor. At least if it's serious. Or use Dr. Google if it's not too bad.

If it is approved by the FDA? HECK YEAH BAYBEEE

You just need Ann to check those. Ask Joe from Sewage.

Only if it is hosted by Google.

There's no such thing as AI, only language models.

So, the real question is "would you trust a chatbot to scan your genitals"