There are plenty of reasons to be wary of AI, but let’s not dismiss the possibilities it offers for improving accessibility.
  • snooggums@midwest.socialEnglish
    27·
    3 months ago

    I think almost everyone is on board with ai as a tool used by people.

    The pushback is against ai being used in a way that is mostly or fully automated withoit human confirmation. Or when ai is used to justify terrible practices by shifting the blame from the people doing those things, like blaming ai for denying medical care when humans were doing that already.

    • Telorand@reddthat.comEnglish
      22·
      3 months ago

      Though it would be poetic justice if some future AGI decides that billionaires are the problem and must be culled for the sake of humanity.

  • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    157·
    3 months ago

    Don’t expect anyone to come running to make things better for disabled people unless they think they can make a profit off of it.

    Which, since all this AI bullshit is driven purely by the profit motive, means that you’re just as right to be wary of things that help the disabled from these AI companies as much as anything else.

    Lots of companies have “helped the disabled” with specialized technological implants. Then when the company goes tits up, the people they’ve “helped” are left with slowly breaking implants and a fortune of a surgery to get the implant removed, since it no longer works or is supported.

    https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/05/25/1073634/brain-implant-removed-against-her-will/

    Expect the same treatment from AI companies. Once you’re not profitable, they want you to get fucked.

  • eestileib@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1914·
    3 months ago

    Yeah, it will be used to “scientifically” entrench discrimination and denial of medical care.

    Absolutely nobody is going to benefit from AI except ghouls like Nadella and Altman.

    • Ilandar@aussie.zoneEnglish
      8·
      3 months ago

      You should listen to blind smartphone user Steve Nutt discuss his experiences using AI tools on the Phone Show Chat podcast or read about the experiences of Ann, a woman who was paralyzed after a stroke, who was able to communicate again using her voice thanks to AI. In other words, let the disabled speak for themselves instead of assuming they are some homogenous group of people who all share the exact same opinion as you and have nominated you as their sole representative.

    • helopigs@lemmy.worldEnglish
      81·
      3 months ago

      I’m already benefiting from it on a daily basis, and I’m neither of those people.

      Capitalists will always capitalize, but that doesn’t necessarily negate usefulness. On the contrary, by some estimates llama3 cost nearly $1B to develop, yet it’s free on huggingface for anyone to download and use.

    • TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org
      103·
      3 months ago

      I am benefitting right now. It’s great for programming. It’s built right into my IDE now. In fact, this has been a thing for quite a while now with many people…

  • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    3 months ago

    My sister is blind and she is very excited about the prospect of good screen readers that don’t read out the pointless shit while at the same time being completely unable to describe images.

    AI has the potential to be hugely useful for people with disabilities. It just needs to be done in a way that’s private, hopefully ran locally.