Birbla

Discussion summary

Discussions around Midjourney's new scanning tech highlight skepticism about its usefulness and safety. Some compare it to past tech failures like Theranos, questioning its practicality and motives.

What the discussion says

  • Skepticism about the safety of ultrasound scanning on bodies.
  • Concerns about the actual utility of external imaging versus internal scans.
  • Comparison to Theranos raises doubts about the technology's credibility.
  • Criticism of startup motives focusing on profit over safety.
“Ultrasound on bodies isn't a good idea, especially without proven safety.”
— deadbabe
“External imaging might be cheaper but offers less value than internal scans.”
— wongarsu

Join the discussion

Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.

Sign in
  • Hacker News
  • I’m just wondering when people are going to realize sticking your body into water being vibrated with ultrasound isn’t a good idea?

    I used to have ultrasonic cleaner for jewelry and one of the things advised is to not put your hand in the water when it’s vibrating as it can be bad for your bones.

    by deadbabe
  • The new scanning technique is very fancy, but it sounds like people might be better of with boring full body visual imaging to check for skin cancer. If they want an AI angle to that, Midjourney could easily make a digital twin from the scan.
    by xnx
  • Good to see Mr. Valente is doing well
    by fusslo
  • getting serious theranos vibes from this
    by micromacrofoot
  • Does this whole thing seem fishy to anyone else?
    by bparsons
  • One thing that’s kinda awkward in the video: they mention one of the big shortcomings of ultrasound being that it can’t image “airy” organs like the lungs, and their expert responds to that by mentioning that the amount of angles/devices means that you still get imaging of everything surrounding the lungs.

    But the critiscism isn’t that the lungs would obstruct you from imaging certain areas, it’s that there’s just very salient parts of the body that you can’t really image with ultrasound, which means this would not be a full bodyscan even if the resolution was incredible.

    I think there’s some genuine intent here, if for no other reason than that it seems silly to transition from ai to hardware if you’re purely trying to grift. I just wish they responded candidly to the obvious questions people have.

    by Fraterkes
  • There's a risk of echos of Theranos here. A paper apparently describing this ultrasound approach has been uploaded to arXiv [0]. If so, the resolution demonstrated is nowhere near sufficient to detect small changes to anatomy, let alone monitor them over time. Future developments could obviously improve on that.

    [0] “Whole Cross-Sectional Human Ultrasound Tomography” https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.00110

    by pcrh
  • This skepticism is weird to me. I might be overly naive, but it looks like these are people that have funding for doing something they think is cool and think could help people out. Whether or not it turns out that way is something we'll have to see, but the premise of just going ahead and building the thing should be applauded in my opinion
    by roer

Explore Birbla archives