BBC In Depth: the ongoing battle to define autism

What if... there turned out to be more autistics than NT's? Yippee!!!!!!!

I would never have thought of using equality legislation like this. It's a good idea, though and I will use it if I need too. We're lucky that we have a centre ofr the unemployed here that does a lot of advocacy work. I've become very sceptical about CAB though, they seem more an arm of the state than an independent organisation helping ordinary people. Our's has a "triage" system where they assess your problem, that you told them about in a short message or email form and then reach a desicion about whether they're going to help you, which in itself takes about 6 weeks, then you have to wait for an appointment. They only do benefits work now too.

Don't get me wrong I'm not anti tech, and the problems I see with it's increased use are because of the tech itself but the humans who control it and set the parameters for how it will be used. It's those I distrust and as we've not sorted enough of the things that "computer says no" too. The computer seems all powerful and nobody has the power to gainsay it, even when they know its wrong, like when my parents tried to get a credit card with a £500 limit, just for use online, hte computer said no as they had no credit hstory, having paid off thier mortgage and having no outstanding loans. The woman doing the checks said it was crazy as she could seen they had plenty of money to cover a £500 limit, but there was nothing she could do.

What do you propose for those who can't use digital services?

They might be the products of human ingenuity, but humans have a long record of being stupid with their cleverness. I just don't share your views on tech, I don't think it will provide the answers you hope for, and what about those of us who can't do the tech side of it, who don't have the skill or equipment? I feel discriminated against and left out now and I don't see that getting any better in the future. Why does more tech have to be the answer to everything? It won't stop us being desriminated against, it won't make more people or services appear to help us, I think it will increase the narrative that all autistic people are good with tech and we'll get more tech and fewer people.

Sorry to be so long in specifically replying to your message here TheCatWoman.

The way that I see it is that the computers and the programs they run and the output they make are a product of human ingenuity.

My brain does the "what ifs" exactly the same as yours does - ad infinitum.  Though broadly speaking in respect of the questions that you have raised my answer is that "where there is a will there is a way".

In the context of the initial post for this thread, my biggest fear is that the human ingenuity used is biased against autistic people and the damage that bias causes - the human isolation that you describe so powerfully and the wider downplaying of the messages that all the "canaries in the coal mine" autistic people are giving for all of neurodiversity,

I have been wondering about setting up another thread that focuses specifically on how members here experience socio-political issues, such as those that have emerged in this thread on the diagnostic debate, and how they manage them.

I hope that wondering about these issues as we have and what to do about them and continue to do in our conversataions here can and will be shown to make for better outcomes.

Best Wishes

I'm putting this post here so as I can answer Peter and Phased.

Sorry the maths stuff went right over my head, I'm not entirely sure what an integer is.

In your vision of AI diagnosing autism, I'm guessing you mean it doing it via some sort of zoom meeting?

What if one dosen't have the tech to do this?

What if one's tech skills are to poor to use it?

What if you're totally paranoid about having your photo taken and avoid looking at cameras? Even if you were sat in front of one, but kept your head down and didn't look at it, I know people do this to humans too, but with autism and eye contact, I imagine this could be another difficulty.

At our GP's they have a system where you register your arrival on a screen and another screen call you when the doctors ready to see you. The screen keeps crashing, screens are often poor at registering finger taps when one wears gloves or has dry skin, the most hilarious bit is listening to the screen try and pronounce peoples names, its a good job they put them in writing too or nobody would understand a thing! It's not just traditional Welsh names it has problems with, but many normal English one too. I tries to pronounce every letter, so names like "John", "Hugh", "Anne" and "Jane" it really struggles with, let alone names like Lloyd or Dafydd, it stutters. If tech thats being rolled out now can't cope with these simple things, how will it cope with more complex things, I do realised that speech is more complicated for a machine than it sounds. But, how will it cope with dialects? Or would it all be done via keyboard or touch screen, how will it cope with visual impairment?

I don't have to imagine something because others already have? Hmmm, would these be the same people who make "intuitive" things like phones? Because they seem anything but intuitive, in the case of phones they maybe intuitive if you've had every model since the first, but if you come in at the middle, it feels like being handed an instrument you've never played before and made to sit in the middle of an orchestra in full swing and told you'll pick it up fine because it's intuitive.

I'm not sure I trust other peoples imaginations.

I think my biggest fear with things like this is "computer says no", we've all had experiences of this sort of insanity and I fear it will only get worse, with fewer overrides from humans, that the AI will go rogue and stop the humans disagreeing wth it.

I'm playing devils advocat here, because I don't understand tech, but I'm on the recieving end of a lot of unintended consequenses from it and probably some of those are from the imaginations of techie people building THEIR ideal world. 

I'm also wary of tech being shoved at autistic people and other with leaning difficulties etc, it can be a great help, but what messages is it sending out? Ones that you're too complicated for humans, that you're not a "proper" human and "they", NT's don't want to have anyting to do with you,so you become more isolated and alone and still wondering why you feel lonely and would like others to talk too, to cuddle, to have a relationship and children with? 

I'm putting this post here so as I can answer Peter and Phased.

Sorry the maths stuff went right over my head, I'm not entirely sure what an integer is.

In your vision of AI diagnosing autism, I'm guessing you mean it doing it via some sort of zoom meeting?

What if one dosen't have the tech to do this?

What if one's tech skills are to poor to use it?

What if you're totally paranoid about having your photo taken and avoid looking at cameras? Even if you were sat in front of one, but kept your head down and didn't look at it, I know people do this to humans too, but with autism and eye contact, I imagine this could be another difficulty.

At our GP's they have a system where you register your arrival on a screen and another screen call you when the doctors ready to see you. The screen keeps crashing, screens are often poor at registering finger taps when one wears gloves or has dry skin, the most hilarious bit is listening to the screen try and pronounce peoples names, its a good job they put them in writing too or nobody would understand a thing! It's not just traditional Welsh names it has problems with, but many normal English one too. I tries to pronounce every letter, so names like "John", "Hugh", "Anne" and "Jane" it really struggles with, let alone names like Lloyd or Dafydd, it stutters. If tech thats being rolled out now can't cope with these simple things, how will it cope with more complex things, I do realised that speech is more complicated for a machine than it sounds. But, how will it cope with dialects? Or would it all be done via keyboard or touch screen, how will it cope with visual impairment?

I don't have to imagine something because others already have? Hmmm, would these be the same people who make "intuitive" things like phones? Because they seem anything but intuitive, in the case of phones they maybe intuitive if you've had every model since the first, but if you come in at the middle, it feels like being handed an instrument you've never played before and made to sit in the middle of an orchestra in full swing and told you'll pick it up fine because it's intuitive.

I'm not sure I trust other peoples imaginations.

I think my biggest fear with things like this is "computer says no", we've all had experiences of this sort of insanity and I fear it will only get worse, with fewer overrides from humans, that the AI will go rogue and stop the humans disagreeing wth it.

I'm playing devils advocat here, because I don't understand tech, but I'm on the recieving end of a lot of unintended consequenses from it and probably some of those are from the imaginations of techie people building THEIR ideal world. 

I'm also wary of tech being shoved at autistic people and other with leaning difficulties etc, it can be a great help, but what messages is it sending out? Ones that you're too complicated for humans, that you're not a "proper" human and "they", NT's don't want to have anyting to do with you,so you become more isolated and alone and still wondering why you feel lonely and would like others to talk too, to cuddle, to have a relationship and children with? 

I would never have thought of using equality legislation like this. It's a good idea, though and I will use it if I need too. We're lucky that we have a centre ofr the unemployed here that does a lot of advocacy work. I've become very sceptical about CAB though, they seem more an arm of the state than an independent organisation helping ordinary people. Our's has a "triage" system where they assess your problem, that you told them about in a short message or email form and then reach a desicion about whether they're going to help you, which in itself takes about 6 weeks, then you have to wait for an appointment. They only do benefits work now too.

Don't get me wrong I'm not anti tech, and the problems I see with it's increased use are because of the tech itself but the humans who control it and set the parameters for how it will be used. It's those I distrust and as we've not sorted enough of the things that "computer says no" too. The computer seems all powerful and nobody has the power to gainsay it, even when they know its wrong, like when my parents tried to get a credit card with a £500 limit, just for use online, hte computer said no as they had no credit hstory, having paid off thier mortgage and having no outstanding loans. The woman doing the checks said it was crazy as she could seen they had plenty of money to cover a £500 limit, but there was nothing she could do.

What do you propose for those who can't use digital services?

They might be the products of human ingenuity, but humans have a long record of being stupid with their cleverness. I just don't share your views on tech, I don't think it will provide the answers you hope for, and what about those of us who can't do the tech side of it, who don't have the skill or equipment? I feel discriminated against and left out now and I don't see that getting any better in the future. Why does more tech have to be the answer to everything? It won't stop us being desriminated against, it won't make more people or services appear to help us, I think it will increase the narrative that all autistic people are good with tech and we'll get more tech and fewer people.

Sorry to be so long in specifically replying to your message here TheCatWoman.

The way that I see it is that the computers and the programs they run and the output they make are a product of human ingenuity.

My brain does the "what ifs" exactly the same as yours does - ad infinitum.  Though broadly speaking in respect of the questions that you have raised my answer is that "where there is a will there is a way".

In the context of the initial post for this thread, my biggest fear is that the human ingenuity used is biased against autistic people and the damage that bias causes - the human isolation that you describe so powerfully and the wider downplaying of the messages that all the "canaries in the coal mine" autistic people are giving for all of neurodiversity,

I have been wondering about setting up another thread that focuses specifically on how members here experience socio-political issues, such as those that have emerged in this thread on the diagnostic debate, and how they manage them.

I hope that wondering about these issues as we have and what to do about them and continue to do in our conversataions here can and will be shown to make for better outcomes.

Best Wishes