alt Hacker NewsTHis is where rubber meets the road. Show me how AI can make life easier for autistic people and their caregivers , mentally challenged people and their caregiver and I will believe in the promise of AI.
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I cannot see why this litmus test is either necessary nor sufficient for evaluating the success of LLMs.
One low hanging fruit is that it can file their taxes. Boom, that'll save a few hours and like $100 a person. After that, it's just a matter of your creativity.
It has infinite patience as a teacher in an infinitesimal number of detail oriented specific areas where others would fail. It can maintain perspective on longer term goals and repetition and such through proven autism treatment pathways like CBT/speech therapies where humans be prohibitively expensive or would tire. That's surely something? It can reinforce bringing detail out to generalities. That helps for some. I'd say pedagogy and communications therapy are therefore both clear areas of promise.
These are viable for the population as a whole, not just people with autism or identified learning difficulties.
> make life easier for autistic people
Where life does not come with an instruction manual, I've found it useful to ask AI, "hey, I got kicked out of a social group (again), what happened?", and AI is able to tell me what it is I did wrong and what to do differently next time. There is a danger of AI psychosis, and autistic people I've discussed this with have had varying levels of luck with this strategy, depending on how honest they are able to be with themselves and the machine, but AI has helped facilitate difficult conversations for me. Eg Say I want to tell someone they "fucking suck and to go kill themselves". Obviously that's not very nice. My caregivers don't deserve to be told that. AI is able to help me find the words that aren't that, while helping me figure out the words I need to communicate the underlying issue. My human therapist is only available one hour a week and doesn't come cheap. Friends only have so much patience. AI is available 24/7 and is much more affordable.
The neurodivergent community thoroughly and resoundingly rejects AI and for damn good reason.
AI certainly makes it easier for me with ADHD (and probably Autism too, they often go together).
It helps me do planning and research which are the boring parts of a project for me and I abhor them so I tend to procrastinate so long that the project is no longer relevant. AI helps me get through this phase much more easily.