Is AI Bad For PWD? It Depends

What effect is AI going to have on Disability?

That’s an excellent question and the answer is really simple. It’s going to be absolutely terrible.

Oh or is it going to enable People With Disabilities to live fuller lives and regain lost abilities?

Or is it both?

Yessss?

Look, this is going to get a bit nit picky but I think it’s going to be important to work out exactly what we mean by AI when we’re talking about how it’s going to affect People With Disabilities.

For instance when we’re talking about how services like ChatGPT we’re actually talking about a specific type of AI called Large Language Models (LLMs). These are built by ingesting data from all over the web and then assigning values to both the data and the relationships that the data has with other data. This produces a statistical model that allows the LLM to present as if it “understands” the relationships and can thus be queried using every day language and respond in kind.

On the other hand if we’re talking about the models being used to say detect cancer in MRI imaging, then we’re still talking about what’s called Machine Learning, but the data here is hundreds of thousands of medical images that have been tagged with “yes this shows cancer” or “no this doesn’t show” cancer. The system then uses this information to determine if a new image shows the signs of cancer (based on what it’s learned from its data set) or not. [https://neurosciencenews.com/ai-mri-neurology-27870/]

Or even models that learn what brain signals mean what and then replicate that to drive prosthetics [https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-68368439]

Then you have other forms of AI, like say Voice Synthesis. The data here is literally a persons voice. We feed hours of that persons voice into a set of algorithms and out the other comes a copy of that voice. That voice can then be used by someone who doesn’t have one. [https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c789lnpd59eo]

Or maybe we’re talking about AI systems that are being used to filter job applicants. Systems that have been proven to contain biases against People With Disabilities [https://www.disabilitysupportguide.com.au/talking-disability/chatgpt-shown-to-overlook-job-applicants-with-disability]

As with all things, AI and Disability is a spectrum. At one end you’re going to get truly horrendous cases, systems that punish and disadvantage People With Disabilities, but at the other you’ll find systems that actually work to give People With Disabilities a new lease on life, either directly or indirectly.

We need to explore this properly, both the good and the bad.