Criticism of Broad Autism Phenotype

Sounds like diagnosis envy to me, NT's who are jealous and feeling left out. People don't realise that just having one or two things that are on the spectrum dosen't mean that the spectrum is wrong or that they are misdiagnosed. A spectrum condition and there are many not just ASC, but things like fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue etc are called a spectrum as there are a list of signs and symptoms that can go to make a diagnosis, people will often have half a dozen or more, but not the whole list, unlike an illness like measles where everybody has the same symptoms.

Here I have a question (not to you, but to the professionals) what is actually autism then? If I understand properly- Syndrom is a set of symptoms, which should occur together maybe with different strength, but I wouldn’t say that someone is autistic only because they feel stressed about changing their routine. Maybe I’m wrong but this is how I understand it. I think that in the future there will be no more diagnoses like we have today and the process will be much easier and faster - also with help of algorithms there will be short assessment- to recognize who is neurotypical or neurodivergent with specified set of traits. Teachers and caters will get the child’s traits specified and they will be trained how to support and work with both NT and ND children. It’s my vision of future of all mental health conditions. I think that it makes more sense than issuing multiple diagnoses and as we can see it’s far from perfect - many people have no access support or even to doctors, many people fall in the cracks, because of bias for example, or get multiple times misdiagnosed, overmedicated it’s all stressful and traumatising. And expensive. 

I don't have the confidence in AI that you do, AH, I think the increased use of AI could mean worse outcomes. AI is only as good as the models it's trained on and if those models are insufficiently diverse then people will still fall down the cracks. Anyone who's old enough to remember when banking wasn't so heavily computerised will know that individual bank managers had the power to make descisions for customers, you wouldn't have the stupid situation we have now where someone like my Mum can't get a dredit card because she dosen't owe anyone anything and therefore has no credit rating. The staff at the bank agree that it's a totally ridiculous situation as they can see she has enough money to cover the credit card limit, but are powerless to do anything. How much worse will this be for people, like us, who are already vulnerable? WIll medical staff become adjuncts to AI rather than the other way around? WIll they have the skill to disagree with the computer or will it have warped the way they're trained?

Yes, you are right! It’s a good example with the bank and credit card. 

Yes, you are right! It’s a good example with the bank and credit card.