Published on 12, July, 2020
One of the things that you hear autistic people complain about frequently is what might be loosely termed mental / organisational load. The stress of juggling appointments, dealing with pushy bureaucrats, keeping track of jobs that need doing, making telephone calls, job hunting itself. The kinds of things a good PA could handle for you.
then there is the social load. Knowing what to say in social situations, reading body language. Having a friend to go with you so you don’t seem so out of place in introductions.
it occurred to me that to some extent AI could help. Google has already been working on an AI personal assistant built into phones. An AI that can track your calendar and to do list. Make entries in them for you based on what you tell it. Take and make phone calls for you and use the info it knows about you to do things like make doctors appointments. I’m even aware of someone who made a dumb computer program to scroll the jobcenter website and make job applications based on a filter, more for the sake of satisfying the benefit police than actually getting a job but still. And there are AIs that can tailor CVS. Modern AI like chat GPT could read complicated documents and summarise them for you, could compose letters or emails to you for your doctor, councillor etc.
The level of sophistication is now such that it isn’t immediately obvious chatbots are chat bots. And with AI generated images and voices they could seem quite lifelike and interactive on a zoom call. Which of course means you could have an AI that maybe sits in on a zoom call and interjects asking the questions you ought to but can’t think of when stressed out.
or your AI could accompany you to social online events. Help you break the ice on discord or in vrchat. More to the point work on AI that can read body language and voice patterns and put it together with subtext have been worked on. Imagine an AI that could read and display non verbal cues as text on smart glasses for you. That could suggest conversation openers, jokes, even pickup lines, based on the non verbal cues of those around you.
if this AI assisted technology existed would you want it?
No.
TBH I just turn off the assistant and don't sign into anything on my phone if I can help it, everyone was worried about Big Brother becoming a reality just a decade ago and they made it a reality by conning people into paying for it and installing it in their own homes themselves by marketing it as "the latest gadgets". But my life was easier before all this. We never had to go without planners and diaries before, just it took the form of little note book things in our bags. You could even set alarms on your watch or "dumb"-phone back then, none of this stuff ever really needed to be on a phone. At first it was just a convenience thing, but now it's not even convenient to the user, because your device and everything you do and type into it is stored as "anonymised data" with a code specifically assigned to you so you can be sent targeted ads both product placement and political campaigns.Nothing AI could ever do would be worth the invasion of privacy or an adequate replacement of the real life relationships and "emotional support humans" I have. I also think it's insulting to be told AI can "fix" anything for me when A, I'm not broken, and B, I'm worthy of real human interaction for me alone, no "helper" required.
I understand why some people might want a tool or a helper with certain struggles that come from being autistic in an allist world, but I really think AI isn't a patch on having an actual human to help you and connect with. And really I think we deserve better than that. Real warmth not just pawned off onto some simulator.
Well to start with I totally get the privacy concerns. The AI ‘assistants’ on smartphones and tools like Alexa run on the cloud so obviously data about you goes there too. But AI doesn’t have to run on the cloud. Decent desktops with beafy graphics cards can do AI and custom AI chips are on the way. Running your AI assistant on your local machine even with open source software may be an option in the future.
2nd I’m well aware most autistic people don’t need help to say, make a telephone call … but some do. Some have such anxiety about social interaction that sort of thing would be quite helpful.
im a smart guy but before I got my PDA I missed appointments all the time because of how bad I am at keeping track of things. I still regularly forget to do little non essential errands for months because i can’t keep track of them mentally and I'm not prepared to schedule every hour of my life with errands. An AI that could see I’m twiddling my thumbs and am not too stressed and suggest one of those errands to me could be quite helpful.
then there is persuasive writing. I’ve benefited greatly by having NTs read over my CVS and job applications. My academic writing has benefited greatly from having NT co authors to review and suggest changes to my papers.
Having an AI that can bridge the gap between you and NTs would probably even be helpful for me and I’m far from incapable.
I don’t think I would nessicerally want an ‘emotional support’ AI but I’ve found being accompanied by good friends who know me and my quirks can help ease me into social situations with others, again they can act as a sort of bridge or translator. An AI that could accompany you as a sort of social translator might be useful.
let’s be blunt most autistic people who might benefit from having a human PA will never get one. This could be an alternative.
edit: according to openai the minimum spec for running chatgpt is
so basically a high end gaming pc with extra large hard drives.
chatgpt can be installed as an open source python library