My Conspiracy Theories in RAD AI are over

So I have discovered I'm a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist. I used to think that AI in radiology had progressed so slowly because people were purposefully sabotaging it. A few interesting data points came to my attention recently (thanks to my husband who was tired of listening to my conspiracy theories).

First off, apparently a large chunk of even the developed world is just plain computer illiterate. If the OECD numbers (https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/computers-and-the-future-of-skill-demand/assessment-of-computer-capabilities-to-answer-questions-in-the-survey-of-adult-skills-piaac_9789264284395-6-en) are to be believed. By the numbers even I, some idiot who can barely use command line well, represent an example of the computer literati. So much for my question of why some bored medical receptionist didn't code up a generative neural net to show us the real differences between intraventricular meningioma and lyphoma we couldn't quite see.

Even a laptop can be an effective laboratory for digital data, but I think that until there are some programs to educate the masses, we can write off 50% of the population from ever doing more than cleaning the glassware, so to speak. Now obviously, most medical doctors can open a computer and get data, unfortunately it seems many can do little more than that. But certainly they could just go get programmers to work with them? Right?

Well, here is where I learned I was so sadly wrong. A quick perusal of the Stack Overflow survey of developers (https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018) shows an alarming trend. The most common kind of programmer is a web developer. In fact you can extrapolate from all the stats in the survey that an army of programmer are working on e-commerce, advertising and garbage mobile apps. Maybe the word garbage is too kind considering that Apple has an app called ''Places I've Pooped'' that millions have downloaded, but I digress. The point here is that most programmers, in one way or another, work on nothing too relevant to medicine. And even some of the best and most talented coders dream of working on nothing too relevant to anything. So many programmers dream of working for Facebook or Google. What these companies have in common is free gourmet meals, high salaries and oh yeah, the embarrassing core business of selling advertisement. So yes, the best and the brightest are now working on what the market seems to have decided is the pressing important question of computing: How do we sell people a bunch of stuff they didn't need or want. And as to why this hasn't yet been so perfected that developers can move on to more relevant questions- well the survey also gives some hints here too. You can extrapolate the vast majority of programmers are on one job less than 3 years. Spaghetti code forever!