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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1286 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 21, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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MRIs and ultrasound are both imaging techniques that have pros and cons but don't use radiation (one of the pros). This reads as if it will have the functionality of a CT scan (3D, multiple images) without ionizing radiation. Pretty impressive if it works as described. Endoscopy is basically a "high tech camera" but is invasive and time-consuming. This sounds like getting in and out of water. Interested to see where this goes.

Ultrasound is very good at some things but is currently understood to be fundamentally unable to provide information about things Midjourney has made claims on. Thanks to AI I'm not going to say it's impossible (unlike say Theranos) but it certainly looks like one of those situations...

What (implausible) claims are they making? I've only seen them talk about body composition, which seems like bog-standard ultrasound + 3D modelling and edge/surface detection.

Ultrasound doesn't really give the information you'd need for a lot of things, but I did a quick lit review and it looks like nature has a paper about some novel techniques they may be copying.

Still probably snake oil but okay fair play maybe this will go somewhere.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/preliminary-thoughts-on-the-midjourney

Scott is not enthused.

Scott's not enthused about the overall capabilities. The closest he gets to sourcing those claims is "the SF AI crowd". Mostly, he's just preempting ideas that nobody is necessarily claiming, which is fine as far as it goes.

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