<
https://www.washington.edu/news/2023/11/02/ai-accessibility-chatgpt-midjourney-ableist/>
"Generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, an AI-powered language
tool, and Midjourney, an AI-powered image generator, can potentially assist
people with various disabilities. These tools could summarize content, compose
messages or describe images. Yet the degree of this potential is an open
question, since, in addition to regularly spouting inaccuracies and failing at
basic reasoning, these tools can perpetuate ableist biases.
This year, seven researchers at the University of Washington conducted a
three-month autoethnographic study — drawing on their own experiences as people
with and without disabilities — to test AI tools’ utility for accessibility.
Though researchers found cases in which the tools were helpful, they also found
significant problems with AI tools in most use cases, whether they were
generating images, writing Slack messages, summarizing writing or trying to
improve the accessibility of documents.
The team presented its findings Oct. 22 at the ASSETS 2023 conference in New
York.
“When technology changes rapidly, there’s always a risk that disabled people
get left behind,” said senior author Jennifer Mankoff, a UW professor in the
Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. “I’m a really strong
believer in the value of first-person accounts to help us understand things.
Because our group had a large number of folks who could experience AI as
disabled people and see what worked and what didn’t, we thought we had a unique
opportunity to tell a story and learn about this.”"
Via Esther Schindler.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
