These apps and software programs could provide access to lifesaving screening – if researchers can find a way to remove the baked-in bias.

The central myth of AI is that it functions objectively. In reality, an AI model is simply a pattern-matching engine. It learns to associate certain visual features with certain diseases.

But it can easily be thrown off by the background color of a person’s skin. In other words, the AI model doesn’t learn to look at the lesion itself. Instead, it picks up on the color of the surrounding skin as a clue. This means that the model’s ability to make accurate predictions essentially degrades to guesses based on skin color.

History repeats itself in the most nauseating ways.