Autism and Artificial Intelligence

thank you both for coming and having this conversation this is youa Cutler and Tony Atwood and today they're going to talk about Ai and the effect that it has on autism and we're going to start out with ustasa who is um an author and the mother of Temple grandon and she also just celebrated a birthday I'll let her tell you which one it was and so we're very happy to have her she's an expert on autism she has done so much for so many families and we're so glad that she and Tony are going to get together and I'm GNA let her introduce Tony Atwood well Tony it's an honor and a privilege to introduce you you're the top authority on autism and Asperger and professor at Griffin University in Australia but whether it's Australia or whether it's the United States or whether it's family or whether it's professional you are the one we turn to and we turn to you first for neurological information and second more important for your sense of social connection so it's a real joy to introduce you Tony ad your comment on social con connection when I first met an autistic child that was my first concern way back in 1971 we were both much younger then we were both younger yes and it was that sense of difficulty in making a connection both ways which became so important to me and that's the area in a way that I focused on now ustasa this is your opportunity for a discussion on artificial intelligence so let's get going oh well let's get going well we've one of the things both Chris and I felt was we needed some definitions of words so let me fish for my dictionary definitions here they are of certain words uh starting with intelligence and as you have said to me Tony there are many many kinds of intelligence but started with the Oxford dictionary which said intelligence is the ability to learn understand and think in a logical way about things the power or act of understanding I looked it up in my old dictionary which goes back to it's a Webster going back to 1945 and it said it intelligence is the intellect or mind in operation now we come to artificial intelligence and it says it is and that I Googled for the simulation of human intelligence processes by Machine especially computer systems now was one other definition I thought we ought to have oh the definition of autism I looked up that it said autism is a neuro neur neurodevelopmental condition of variable severity with lifelong effects that can be recognized from Early Childhood chiefly characterized by by difficulties with social interaction and communication and by restrictive or repetitive patterns of thought and behavior it doesn't mention as which I think both you and I feel is important is the social the connection I've always felt it is not a disorder it is a disconnection I I I agree and and when I particularly talk to autistic teenagers they are desperate for connection they're looking for a group to connect with but unfortunately they may connect with a group that's not appropriate for them but it is that connection is so important well what do you do when it is a when it isn't suitable because that is a connection uh that that they don't handle well uh they or they get too close to people they don't understand they don't connect it's and and it may be for example a group that are involved with alcohol and drugs and they fit into that group and they find that alcohol and marijuana alleviate their anxiety or it may be a group that are very involved with diet and eating problems and to fit into that group sometimes they may follow the pattern of that group with their anxiety and control and in the autistic knowledge base of calories and so on they become an expert for that particular group so sometimes I'm concerned that they may connect with a group that may not be good in the long term I hadn't thought about that uh because I have haven't had you're handling this daily I I haven't been in the circuit uh I've been writing instead uh this is this is important because then the next thing that brings up is uh the question of uh artificial intelligence and how they you're you're dealing with young adults uh what does about the robot how do they handle that and the definition of a robot I had here was uh a machine resembling a human being and able to replicate certain human movements and movements and functions automatically think my thoughts on on autism here is that the problem is connection with people not with animals not with machines like computers and so I think one of the the components here is that an autistic person enjoys intelligence it is something that is comforting for the person that their intellect can solve particular problems and so on so there is a pursuit of intellectual knowledge it is something that is a lifetime Pursuit for that individual but but connecting with people is not something you can easily read in a book or a computer program will do that so I do find that the person lacks a connection but what they're looking for is social and emotional intelligence well the word I get running into now is what they call masking uh where they're trying to appear not to be autistic right if we look at at various components of intelligence one is looking at systems and patterns mathematics is the study of patterns and many autistic individuals are good analyzing systems and patterns now if you're not very good socially you watch you and analyze you look for systems and patterns and rules and when you have connections in the sense of when somebody does this and says that and so on you've got a social Rule and so the masking the camouflaging is a coping and connection mechanism to try and engage with people using your intellect rather than intuition and can do it so well as the mask and the ACT is created they should be awarded every day an Oscar for their performance as being like their peer group but it's exhausting there's a lack of their energy runs out yes and I think we see that with uh young people who will they'll say well they don't have autism because they're so social and you look at them go everything that you see is all learned behaviors that they've taught themselves but it's totally learned there's nothing in there that's spontaneous and it's but it's so good and so smooth that you would assume that is a very socially Adept person and not at all yeah there's another reason for for camouflaging and that is to prevent being bullied and teased the target for bullying and teasing is someone who's different and if you're different you're seen as an easy target So to avoid being bullied and teased to be part part of a group and engage with others it's a very appealing way of connecting but it's not being the authentic self now one of the things I admire about Temple is she's always been the authentic Temple she's never been anyone else Temple is Temple and yes she is yes yes and so it took a lot of help starting at the age of two yes what was a great help was uh Boston Children's Hospital recommended speech lessons now it gave temple two things it took her nearly three years to learn to talk but it put her in connection with other children who also couldn't talk and she had a sense of herself in relation to other people at the age of two she realized she had to wait her turn to one of the things we we've picked out over the years is an autistic person has a different way of learning and thinking and on an intelligence test is a very uneven profile of abilities now the standard School curriculum is based on conventional thinking and often in autism the best learning is solitary now with a screen and it's a different way of learning but also an association with learning difficulties dyslexia discala and so on so each autistic individual has a unique cognitive learning profile which is very difficult for the teacher to know and adapt when they're teaching now if you have artificial intelligence the program can then absorb the learning style of the autistic individual and make the curriculum autism friendly for that autistic person that's one way that it is really going to help teachers who don't have the time or perhaps know and have enough information of their own to develop the program it would be gathered through the uh artificial intelligence so so yes yeah it means that it takes three to six months for the teacher to learn that profile and you've only got three to six months left of the year so if you can do that right at the beginnings then there's a greater chance of academic achievement so so what about the output because we know that their children will now be able to use AI to help them write papers or or uh do projects and and you stage is very concerned about that that's probably going to come up in our concerns but what's the benefit of a child being able to use AI for that for a product do you see any benefit or I think in autism if you're not getting a thrill from social engagement you get a thrill from knowledge and it is very intoxicating and so the person it it we use the phrase in English to go down a rabbit Warren that once they start exploring a topic they keep clicking on this and that and so on absorbing like a sponge all the information so there is a tendency in autism to be to have a mind like an encyclopedia and it will help encyclopedic Minds okay that's that that leaves us with h some real advantages that I mean that's a way child could really shine in a classroom because they could now shine with their own information but also bringing all this other information into it and they would feel very good about themselves because they could use that but then they would learn it from seeing it they would then absorb it I'm assuming but also that there's a suggestion that the genes of Genius are the same as the genes for autism and one of the benefits of autism is a different way of problem solving and diversity in bringing together things that other people wouldn't bring together so by in artificial intelligence exploring many different aspects of knowledge they may have the opportunity to bring it all together to have a unique problemsolving approach it's based on what what's troubling me is it's based on system and it's systemizing thinking rather than empathizing the empathizing isn't there but the systems is and yes what bothers me is systems like science mathematics it can be proved there's an answer there isn't any answer to social e exchange it's a choice it it is but I I want to delve into this a little bit more artificial intelligence is very good for knowledge and Pro problem solving in neurological terms it's the frontal loes of the brain but what it doesn't do is use chemistry and endocrinology which is the basis of emotions like love and so you have to have a completely different system of biochemistry neurotransmitters Endocrinology the hormones to really experence erience feelings so artificial intelligence will not be able to duplicate human feelings and you sta you've said that quite often well what happens expected have thought about it only from a social point of view but I felt the same thing it it couldn't one of the things I came up with is began to think about was we laugh nobody teaches a baby to laugh babies laugh yes it it's a it's just a very uh human act and we often laugh when we run into friends uh or something doesn't quite work out is we we laugh about it it is and I would say this is like with a a two people or group of people there's what we call a chemistry an artificial intellig Ence cannot create the chemistry no and it can't imagine uh I liked the comment of a movie director the other day he said if you can't imagine the scene you can't film it the director can imagine something that doesn't exist but he will make it exist yes that's so true uh yes it the problem is it it relies on current or previous experience not going into should we say purely abstract Futures the person would find the artificial intelligence is not designed to do that well how do we get the good out of it and how do we explore and present to people the the what we must be weing of before we rush in and say it's going to answer everything okay the this week uh there was a positive that I hadn't thought of a colleague of mine has said Tony as you're coming up to retirement and you'll be stopping your clinics she said we could use artificial intelligence to go through all your books and especially all your reports there's tens of thousands of reports of following individuals for 20 30 years she says the wisdom in that is amazing we could create an artificial Tony in other words it looks like me but I what I'm having to say to many of my fames is i h I won't be able to see you again but then I could and if ever they wanted some information they could type it in and I will be able to give them the answer that they're seeking or explanation that they're seeking based on my Collective wisdom and I would love the families to have access to that well and and it's pretty much what you do isn't it I mean I'm sure you still get things that you go well that was unexpected but probably not a lot I'm sure there's fewer and fewer times when something happens and you go I never would have seen I've never seen that before I'm sure you've seen just about everything now and so someone coming up with I mean I've see there' be very few questions that you could answer with your wealth of knowledge my question is will you be there on the screen doing it is there going to be a little Tony person on the screen will you be in anime I I think it would be a person on the screen and as much as they they will show you on YouTube this is Tom Cruz but it's not Tom Cruz right and so it's it's me but it's not me however it can be a way of accessing because uh it it can be and this is an interesting way of of recreating your grandmother for example uh and so there can be a way of connection that would be fascinating but those are the POS however I must admit there are many negatives I'm concerned about okay well let's talk about some of the negatives Asia has a lot of negatives too she does not want to get in a car I feel very weary about it okay I think one of my first concerns is fake news that seems very real but can have a political agenda and I am concerned of the recruitment of autistic individuals to extremist organizations that will promise connection an alternative family very clear and and rigid rules of conduct and behavior and may then move into directions that are extremist in that lonely needing connection that can be misused by certain political and religious groups so we could have an evil Tony is what you're saying oh yes it's possible but but I'm concerned is that what happen is that the autistic person is is interested in um a particular theme out of curiosity and then there are systems that will spot that that person's interested and will start to feed them the information which will consolidate a particular perspective and then find that that person can be manipulated to do whatever the organization wants them to do no I I agree with you and I see some of that with young people who get involved with um getting a wife in a foreign country something like that where it's a very where the people aren't even really the people that you're talking to and it's a very manipulative system and someone can and we see it all the time it's not just people with Autism people get taken advantage of and lose a lot of money through things like that so it would just be a very organized a artificial intelligence doing the same thing would really be fine-tuned and you could yes destroy somebody take all their money put them in a place where they're in danger just for sport I mean yes horrible may happen to a non-autistic person is you have F close friends and family that you disclose this to and they say whoa whoa I wouldn't trust that no no that's not good but in autism there's a tendency to be solitary and not to disclose those things and so there isn't a natural uh second opinion occurring and once in that determination they' go down a particular path they will want to go through it to the end to have closure to explore every aspect of it and that concerns me that it may not be um interests that are safe that that's a huge possibility are even meaningful they may not yes yeah what we what we want as we talk about wanting our children to be happy it always seems to me well is we want them to be fulfilled as they see themselves as fulfilled but now you're mentioning the fact that they can get fulfilled in a way that isn't healthy in indeed and I'm I'm sure the this is where to a certain extent the FBI and other agencies look at profiling and one of the characteristics that they need to consider is an autistic person it also means legally if the person is charged with a particular offense how much has autism contributed to mitigating circumstances in terms of responsibility it opens up all sorts of issues well then the most important thing is that people know this yes knowledge how how to it's this how to to work to spread knowledge shared information yes and and the importance to encourage the autistic person to share where they're going and what they're doing yes and and they won't if they they If part of the manipulation with the things they're getting is to not to even reinforce more stay isolated just stay with us yeah one of the the characteristics I've picked up with autism over the years is the concept of trust and that has been broken by peers of bullying and teasing and being taken advantage of and often abused and so the organization will understand the psychology of autism and focus on trust you can trust us you can't trust anyone else and that leads almost to a sense of paranoia doesn't sound very healthy to me no but it it's already there um but all this points to the need for what I see too is it it's not just that families need to understand schools need to understand small communities need to understand we need to spread some kind of information I've had note of uh small towns that had autistic children and they wanted to help them they didn't know how even here in New York when I went to a school a good many years ago and it's probably still true they said I said I wanted to come and see the autistic class and they said oh please come the city gave us money but nobody told us what to do with it yes because the information isn't we need to make it more how do we make it more available yes I think artificial intelligence may have an opportunity to do that to pass on information I think that there are some positives but it it's like uh a screen a screen is neutral it's what you're watching on the screen that counts and that's the problem with artificial intelligence is where are they going with that I see it as the most benefit is going to be for people working with children with autism not for the person with autism themselves but I do like the teachers also evaluating children with autism I think AI when you you plug in all the things the child's uh you're seeing with that child and it comes up with some direction for you to go I think that's going to be helpful and say oh this child is you know probably got a lot of sensory needs that you're missing um so I I think it could be very useful in that sense but for the person with autism and then of course for the people who are just do bad things I mean they're just out there I mean I don't know and helping someone avoid it I think that's something that teachers are going to have to be and parents everyone's going to have to be very aware as ustasa says over and over again we've got to look at this and really figure out what we're going to do as people who help people with Autism but how do we how do we achieve that that's what I want to know is how do you get the the word out I think a on our website of the TGC your hit Tony it gets hit over a thousand hits more so somebody went to to and they will after this one they will they will come now we need to increase that how how to get the word out it's cooperation between people like you and I who have experience and wisdom of autism we know the autistic way of thinking we know some of the challenges but also autistic people do as well so I see a collaboration between expertise in autism in terms of either family or uh professionally but also autistic individuals themselves to point out what the dangers could be because sometimes an autistic person is more likely to accept advice from another autistic person than necessarily a professional Point yes yeah very true yeah and that credibility is going to be important so if it comes from autistic individuals I think it's going to be far more powerful thank you both uh Tony you're amazing we we always like having you here and you you're so wonderful because you have so many friends that love to talk to you so hopefully um could you could you take us take it away for us USTA with a a lovely thank you and goodbye to every body well to repeat what I said before uh we come to you Tony all of us whether it's just what we always did in the past now we've upped the Addie and we've got artificial intelligence we turn to you and thank you treasure your words thank you thank you thank you and USTA I treasure your words too your wisdom your Insight you are awesome in what you know and how you have supported autism so I'm looking forward to meeting again this is they time yes okay I ask you I leave you with a comment choose another topic and we'll meet again all right [Music]

Channel: Temple Grandin Eustacia Cutler Autism Fund

Views: 1,734

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Id: yyX5y0SCIrI

Length: 31min 49sec (1909 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 12 2023