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Automating ableism
AI doesn’t have to be a tool of prejudice. But unless disabled people become key stakeholders in its development, it’s almost certain to be.
In 2023, a ProPublica investigation revealed that insurance giant Cigna was using an internal algorithm that automatically flagged coverage claims, allowing doctors to sign off on mass denials, which disproportionately targeted disabled people with complex medical needs. Amy Gaeta, an academic and poet who specializes in interactions between humans and technology, also sees potential for AI that “can take really tedious tasks for [disabled people] who are already overworked, extremely tired” and automate them, filling out forms, for example, or offering practice conversations for job interviews and social settings. For a truly bright future in AI, the tech community needs to embrace disabled people from the start as innovators, programmers, designers, creators, and, yes, users in their own right who can materially shape the technologies that mediate the world around them.
Or read this on The Verge