AI could be a game changer for people with disabilities

snooggums , 8 hours 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.

eestileib , 8 hours 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.

TimeSquirrel , 6 hours 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...

helopigs , 4 hours 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.

SnotFlickerman , 8 hours 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.

technologyreview.com/…/brain-implant-removed-agai…

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

Even_Adder , 8 hours ago

What about open source projects?

SnotFlickerman , 8 hours ago

They’re great, but if the last 20-30 years of Open Source are any indication, most average people do not use Open Source, and beyond that, most don’t even know what it is.

The use of Open Source projects is mainly in corporations, while individuals using Open Source projects make up a small minority of the use cases.

I would love to see growth in that arena, but if the past is any indication, it will struggle to grow.

Further, as these may be considered “medically assistive devices” you run into the issue of possibly needing FDA approval to even distribute it.

Even_Adder , 7 hours ago

Open source AI is huge, and I don’t think you need FDA approval to distribute a model. Where are you even getting that from?

SnotFlickerman , 7 hours ago

We’re talking about people with disabilities, and depending on what you’re doing with AI, it can get organized under being a medically assistive device, which suddenly becomes an FDA issue.

Ask the people who run Open Source projects aimed at opening up things like Glucose monitors or CPAP machines. They are harangued by the FDA. The FDA claims the projects are dangerous and that only professionals and doctors should have any ability to modify them.

Even_Adder , 7 hours ago

Which projects have been shut down by FDA order?

SnotFlickerman , 7 hours ago

You realize there’s regulation other than just banning things, right?

hhs.gov/…/open-source-software-risks-in-the-healt…

October 2023: FDA finalizes guidance mandating that all medical devices running software must create and maintain a software bill of materials (SBOM), including for open-source software.

Still, the point being is that to develop Open Source medical software, you’re going to be dealing with potential regulations that you must pass to be able to legally release the software in places like the USA (you can always host the files in some country that doesn’t give a shit). Achieving meeting the regulation can often drastically increase the cost of development. Open Source projects can’t just magic up more money for development like giant corporations can.

Look in 2024 we’re barely cracking 5% of people in the world using Linux as a desktop. The FDA doesn’t have to ban it to make “normal” people scared of using Open Source solutions. It’s a harder hill to climb than just getting people to change their desktop OS.

Even_Adder , 6 hours ago

There are more ways to help people than making medical software. Rather than saying they could focus on doing simpler things, you automatically jumping to all projects running afoul of FDA regulations is pretty telling. All while still having not provided a single project halted by FDA order.

SnotFlickerman , 6 hours ago

What’s telling is I am actually disabled and have a disabled partner so these are things I actually think about chucklefuck.

Your unwillingness to accept that regulation is a real thing that really happens sometimes is weird.

Even_Adder , 6 hours ago

I accept regulations are real, but not all ways to help people require you dealing with regulations. I’m still waiting on that proof by the way.

lemmeBe , 6 hours ago

Exactly this. I’m a developer currently. Before that I had only a vague idea of what open source was, basically that it’s visible to everyone. Didn’t know about github, or any other application of open source outside of pc software and I was kinda advanced tech user with flashing custom roms, trying out Linux etc. Laymen have no idea what’s going on, exceptions aside.