Is that dinner or an ulcerated foot?
AI is auto-sorting pics of blood and gore on surgeons’ phones into albums labelled “tasty bites” and “good eats”.
Surgeons from around the globe have reported having their photos of wounds and exposed organs classified as food by an iPhone algorithm.
Dr Mark Hoofnagle, a trauma surgeon from St Louis in the US, kicked the conversation off this week by tweeting an image of god-knows-what organ in a bucket (a bowel maybe?), which had been lovingly placed by the artificial semi-intelligence into a “Tasty Bites over the years” album.
I love it when the Iphone AI tries to interpret the photos on a surgeon’s phone. pic.twitter.com/3GkqdO6OrN
— Mark Hoofnagle (@MarkHoofnagle) November 20, 2020
The tweet quickly snowballed into an international thread, with a man from Utrecht reporting that his wife, a vet, had a similar experience. “’Eet smakelijk’ means enjoy your meal in Dutch”, he explained to the growing crowd.
Another iPhone, presumably one owned by a French-speaking person, slapped a photo of fatty tissue with the words “Bon appetit”, to which one spectator commented, “It does look like an omelette”.
Avert your eyes if you don’t like gross images because this was the worst one by far…
Clearly, iPhones see human bodies as highly edible… Anyone feeling slightly more concerned about a robot apocalypse?
If you see something stupid, say something stupid… If your phone also has cannibalistic tendencies, send screenshots to felicity@medicalrepublic.com.au
