According to new research, deep learning models based on artificial intelligence can identify someone's race merely by looking at their X-rays, which would be impossible for a human doctor looking at the same photos.

The findings raise several serious concerns concerning AI's role in medical diagnosis, assessment, and treatment: Could computer algorithms mistakenly apply racial bias when analysing photographs like these?

An international team of health researchers from the United States, Canada, and Taiwan tested their AI on X-ray images that the computer program had never seen before after training it with hundreds of thousands of existing X-ray images annotated with specifics of the patient's race.

Even when the scans were taken from people of the same age and sex, the AI was able to predict the patient's claimed racial identification on these photos with amazing accuracy. With some groups of photos, the system achieved 90% accuracy.

\"We aimed to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the ability of AI to recognize a patient's racial identity from medical images,\" the researchers wrote in their published report.

\"We show that standard AI deep learning models can be trained to predict race from medical images with high performance across multiple imaging modalities, which was sustained under external validation conditions.\"

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, painted a grim picture of a world that is becoming more unstable, with great powers intent on changing the global order. And he told graduating cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point that they will bear the responsibility to make sure America is ready.

\"The potential for significant international conflict between great powers is increasing, not decreasing,\" Milley said in prepared remarks. \"Whatever overmatch we enjoyed militarily for the last 70 years is closing quickly, and the United States will be, in fact, we already are challenged in every domain of warfare, space, cyber, maritime, air, and of course land.\"

America, he said, is no longer the unchallenged global power. Instead, it is being tested in Europe by Russian aggression, in Asia by China's dramatic economic and military growth as well as North Korea's nuclear and missile threats, and in the Middle East and Africa by instability from terrorists.

Drawing a parallel with what military officials are seeing in Russia's war on Ukraine, Milley said future warfare will be highly complex, with elusive enemies and urban warfare that requires long-range precision weapons, and new advanced technologies.

The U.S. has already been rushing new, high-tech drones and other weapons to the Ukrainian military ? in some cases equipment that was just in the early prototype phases. Weapons such as the shoulder-launched kamikaze Switchblade drones are being used against the Russians, even as they are still evolving.

And as the war in Ukraine has shifted ? from Russia's unsuccessful battle to take the capital city of Kyiv to a gritty urban battle for towns in the eastern Donbas region ? so has the need for different types of weapons. Early weeks focused on long-range precision weapons such as Stinger and Javelin missiles, but now the emphasis is on artillery, and increased shipments of howitzers.

And over the next 25 to 30 years, the fundamental character of war and its weapons will continue to change.

The U.S. military, Milley said, can't cling to concepts and weapons of old, but must urgently modernize and develop the force and equipment that can deter or, if needed, win in a global conflict. And the graduating officers, he said, will have to change the way U.S. forces think, train and fight.

As the Army's leaders of tomorrow, Milley said, the newly minted 2nd lieutenants will be fighting with robotic tanks, ships and airplanes, and relying on artificial intelligence, synthetic fuels, 3-D manufacturing and human engineering.

\"It will be your generation that will carry the burden and shoulder the responsibility to maintain the peace, to contain and to prevent the outbreak of great power war,\" he said.

In stark terms, Milley described what failing to prevent wars between great powers looks like.

\"Consider that 26,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines were killed in six weeks from October to November of 1918 in the Battle of the Meuse-Argonne in World War I,\" said Milley. \"Consider that 26,000 U.S. troops were killed in the eight weeks from the beaches of Normandy to the fall of Paris.\"

Recalling the 58,000 Americans killed in just the summer of 1944 as World War II raged, he added, \"That is the human cost of great-power war. The butcher's bill.\"

Paraphrasing a Bob Dylan song, Milley said, \"we can feel the light breeze in the air. We can see the storm flags fluttering in the wind. We can hear in the distance the loud clap of thunder. A hard rain is about to fall.\"

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