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?
I'll take it! But I'll probably fall in love with it as in some interesting movies!
Nah talking to a robot is just isolation on steroids, it won't be a patch on real human companionship and frankly we deserve better than to have to face a relationship with a load of 1s and 0s, we need to advocate for involvement in society not to be pushed so far into the fringes we drop over the edge. All notions of AI "friendship" are a delusion, a symptom of mental illness from desperate isolation that the sufferer needs to recover from not retreat into as a false sense of viability. In this life you need real friends that will come running when the power goes out.
Sorry Peter but you are never going to convince me. Everything you consider a pro I consider a con. It comes down to deep perspective, moral, and ethical differences that cannot be resolved in the world we live in.
π Bees π (they/them) Autism resources in bio #stoptheshock #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs said:That's another problem though, holograms won't be cheap to run and if you are paying for a service anyway it's practically a moral duty at this point to pay for real people and not contribute to unemploment.
I think comercial 'holograms' will more likely be realistic looking 3d avitars on human sized screens. And really the cost is the cost of the screen and computer. Right now services like chat GPU are expencive but new chips customed desined for AI are going to bring the cost down a lot soon. Even at curent rates it costs about 30p to ask one question to chatgpt. Supose a shop worker gets asked 50 questions a shift thats 15£. You'd stugel to even hire some one for an hour at that rate on the night shift. The goverment is not about to impose morial dutys on comercial entities to boost employment.
π Bees π (they/them) Autism resources in bio #stoptheshock #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs said:I've never been served by a machine in the role of a human better than the human can, the robots are always subpar at best
I frequently have though. The electronic keyosks at mcDonads do a better job of getting my order right than the guy on the till most of the time. I always order a special order and the guy on the till often gets it wrong. The machine almost always gets it right. Actually I was so shocked the one time it got it wrong I got in touch with McDs tech department to inform them of the softwear bug which they then patched. A tired underpayed human 'machine' that does the same boring thing day in day out is not going to outperform an actually machine that never get's tired or looses focus.
Much of the social / mental load of getting by in sociaty is not just anxiaty inducing it's also tedious and borning. Booking an apointment on the phone. browsing multipul webisites and colating the data about local events off of them, booking a plumber or MOT, searching for car insurance. It time consuming and boring. For autistic people it can also be stressfull in a not enough spoons, executive fnction, sence. Why not let an AI do that. It doesn't require creativity, just basic clerical skills. Filling out forms, sumerising documents. Pulling facts out of multipul documents and summerising them in one document. Keeping track of calendas etc. Reciving / conveying information over the phone / email.
Being a PA is boring. Its the interlectual equivalent of being a maid picking up after the loose thoughts and discarded every day problems some one elses mind felt overwhelmed by. I don't see why an AI couldn't do that.
Peter said:I think the problem with that is obvious. A lot of people don't get that whether they deserve it or not. And short of paying some one to do it they probably never will. And frankly I think you will encounter comercial AI 'avitars' far more frequently. At shop checkouts, security doors, anywhere a company would rather save money buy having an AI 'hologram' deal with inain questions.
That's another problem though, holograms won't be cheap to run and if you are paying for a service anyway it's practically a moral duty at this point to pay for real people and not contribute to unemploment.Also a lot of questions aren't inane and need actual advice a lazily written FAQ can't handle. Because that's another problem with this sort of tech besides the fact it is emblematic of late stage capitalism isn't just that it is overpriced, creepy, and innaccessible, it's also tbh utter crap. I've never been served by a machine in the role of a human better than the human can, the robots are always subpar at best. And I'm not holding my breath on that changing in anyway soon that will be truly available to the masses at all price points. It's not realistic.
π Bees π (they/them) Autism resources in bio #stoptheshock #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs said:You already have that. It's called Alexa or whatever Google has. (Which you can have in your own home and not impose on others.)
these are already primative AIs. But they don't run in the background like a good AI could. Constantly checking for you. Imagine automating your job hunt with an AI so it would read the job discriptions and smart filter the good ones and even preprapair aplications for you to review / tweek before sending off. It's just their constantly working in the background with out you having to drive it, much like a good PA or suport worker.
π Bees π (they/them) Autism resources in bio #stoptheshock #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs said:Pediophobia and automatonophobia is a real problem for lots of people. You having an actual human carer/friend/family member/advocate to introduce us doesn't exclude anyone. And tbh I think you deserve to have real people in your life to do that for you
I think the problem with that is obvious. A lot of people don't get that whether they deserve it or not. And short of paying some one to do it they probably never will. And frankly I think you will encounter comercial AI 'avitars' far more frequently. At shop checkouts, security doors, anywhere a company would rather save money buy having an AI 'hologram' deal with inain questions.