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3 autistic people founded a job platform for nd people. (techcrunch.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/autism@lemmy.world
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I read the article but I didn’t check out the platform yet. Thought it might be useful for my fellow autistic people.

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[–] 28 points 2 years ago (4 children)

AI has bias issues. While humans can be aware of them and course-correct, with the AI, not so much, and that's just comes before all the biased data it was trained on.

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  • [–] [S] 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Ok, I understand. As someone who worked with AI and in hiring in the past I feel like (specifically ND focused) AI can’t do a worse job than traditional recruiting (which is also increasingly done with AI). But I might be wrong. On the other hand so could be you. Have a good one. :)

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    It absolutely can do a worse job, and be more biased. Not to mention Sam Altman is backing it? Yeesh. I'm good.

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Can you somehow prove that? I don’t see how „absolutely“ reinforces your claim. If conventional hiring wasn’t a bag of dicks, hiring companies (which are shit as well) wouldn’t make billions in revenue.

    But I don’t recognize altman. The name sounds familiar. I might need to check him out.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    AI can absolutely screw up these things as bad or worse than any other program.

    AI sucks at nuances it isn't explicitly trained on. That's how you get AIs at eating disorder charities recommending things like 500 calorie daily deficits (this actually happened).

    AI might be able to get a technically accurate translation, but can't always tell what's culturally offensive or colloquially given a new meaning.

    For example, in Spanish "Soy" means "I", and "Caliente" means "Hot". What do you think "Soy caliente" means?

    Well if you got 'I am hot', Google Translate will actually agree with you...but it doesn't mean that at all. What it actually means is 'I am horny'.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yeah, I get it. Pretty rough around the edges, no doubt. I still don’t think this makes „AI powered“ or „assistet“ worse than conventional recruiting. That’s all I‘m saying. It’s also a buzz word that gets used for a lot more than it is worth btw.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (1 child)

    The quality of conventional recruiters can vary wildly. I've dealt with both actual pieces of shit recruiters (the kind that try outright guilt tripping and manipulation) and some amazing ones.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Sure, that’s the same I have experienced but the argument I was making is that it’s not going to be worse if you train AI to especially target ND folks. It’s probably going to be worse than the good recruiters and better than the worst.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    You do realise that's going to be a metric fuckton harder than targeting neurotypicals, right? Like, bordering on impossible.

    The clue is in the D of ND. To put it another way, let's forget the entire spectrum of ND for a second and focus on ASD.

    You not only need to train your AI on every possible interaction quirk an ASD person can have, such as trigger phrases to avoid and jobs they absolutely will not be able to do, you need it to be adaptable such that it can be useful to high functioning ASDers who can mask, to low functiiners that may not be able to leave the house but can maybe do some light computing work, and everywhere in between. And you need it to be able to detect which one it is dealing with.

    That's an impossible task, because the exact combination of issues, quirks, triggers, etc, are often very rare, if not completely unique.

    But surely the AI can learn what the quirks of an individual are, right? Nope. AI learning relies on large datasets to do its work. Datasets that will not exist for all except the most common of issues and quirks. The most an AI can do is avoid a given topic when asked.

    Now extrapolate that to the entire ND community. Good luck.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I understand your point. It’s correct that we do not know (neither do we need to) how their supposed AI works. It could be a mess, it could be no actual AI at all, many different possibilities.

    But I think you might be missing my point here: as someone who is gifted and autistic (and traumatized due to both facts), I can absolutely build you a multi million dollar company (have done so in the past), but I can’t deal with bullying. A practical negation of my skills if I don’t design my environment in a very particular way.

    This is just an example of a skilled individual that gets disabled by reality and nearly needs lab conditions (highly controlled) to work but then does tremendously well.

    One of my personal (and supposedly that of others too) problem starts at recruiting. I can’t tell you what I‘m good at if asked but I can show you. I assume that a lot of people on the spectrum work this way and a change, albeit with infamous AI in the mix, is highly welcome.

    Completely focusing on the AI component massively feels like a „I don’t have this problem so I don’t want it fixed“ type of thinking.

    Does this make sense to you?

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    I think you might be the one that's misunderstanding my point. Or the scope of what is being proposed here.

    My point is not an objection to other methods being out there but a realistic look at what is being proposed here.

    I am also autistic. I have met other autistic people that are high functioning like myself, even in social situations, I have met some that are completely debilitated by noise but are otherwise perfectly capable people, I have met some that are non verbal but can work a computer like a prodigy, and I've met one who will straight up never be able to have even a semi normal life.

    Want to know what the common threads between them are? Beyond an ASD diagnosis, not a lot. One person's fixation is another person's trigger, one's need for white noise is another's audial hellscape. AI has difficulty navigating neurotypical behaviour, despite the latter having the most research behind it, never mind neurodiversity. And a mis step can lead to a trigger or a meltdown.

    So yeah, there isn't really a one-size-fits-all approach. When bringing it outside to include more than just ASD, you're going to find it hard to find even a one-size-fits-most approach. You kinda need that if you want to make a scalable online service.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I got your point right from the beginning. I just don’t think it makes any difference. And I dont feel like you’re trying to get mine as well.

    Without AI the situation is already bad. With AI the situation might improve or not but blanket denying it makes no sense to me.

    Also, we dont use the term „high functioning“ anymore since it is putting people into boxes. Source: https://www.telethonkids.org.au/news--events/news-and-events-nav/2019/june/researchers-call-for-term-high-functioning-autism/#:~:text=Autism%20researchers%20from%20the%20Telethon,children%20on%20the%20autism%20spectrum.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Without AI the situation is already bad. With AI the situation might improve or not but blanket denying it makes no sense to me.

    Because you cannot solve complex problems with buzzwords. Saying AI can fix it is like saying crypto can fix it.

    AI is a very useful tool. To make the best use of it, you need to understand how it works and what it's shortcomings can be.

    In this situation, you're going to constantly run head-first into AI's biggest weaknesses: the quality of the output program is shit when there isn't good data.

    Without AI the situation is already bad. With AI the situation might improve or not but blanket denying it makes no sense to me.

    How, theoretically, would an AI recruiter actually help in your situation? Remember it's still only a recruiter; you'll have to go through interviews anyway with human beings.

    Also, we dont use the term „high functioning“ anymore since it is putting people into boxes.

    What is the preferred term?

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    If you had read the website instead of fighting me, you would know that they are asking questions like „what situations spike your anxiety“ and „what are your strongest interests“.

    AI is not the main feature. The main feature is understanding ND folks and their differences.

    What is the preferred term?

    There is none afaik. We‘re autistic. Some of us are gifted, others have learning disabilities and others again have neither of those. The idea imo is that a severely learning disabled autistic person and a gifted autistic person could stand in for eachother instead of being divided by words since they share the base condition.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    There is none afaik. We‘re autistic. Some of us are gifted, others have learning disabilities and others again have neither of those. The idea imo is that a severely learning disabled autistic person and a gifted autistic person could stand in for eachother instead of being divided by words since they share the base condition.

    While I understand the sentiment...that's a massive messaging failure, especially when you're representing a group of people that largely already have issues communicating.

    Labels don't just exist to bully people. They exist to get ideas across effectively. NTs rely on labelling for quick and effective communication, so if you don't have accepted ones... they'll make their own, with your permission or not. And you may not like what they come up with.

    We'd be better off taking a page from the LGBT playbook here. They have their accepted labels for identifying pretty much every offshoot there is, in the service of quickly communicating the idea. Like when you hear someone is gay, you know they're a guy that's into men, or depending on context, a woman that's into other women, etc.

    We could have non derogatory labels for people who can live independently, those that might have hearing sensitivity considerations, those that need a bit more help, etc. It would actually do wonders when we talk about our autism to NTs. It would do away with a lot of the harmful stereotypes and myths too.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I get your point. But you have to accept that autism and the community around it is like a billion years younger than lgbtq. It’s a good idea to work out this stuff but it will take time.

    Also, low and high functioning never had anything to do with being able to live alone. It was derogatory because it split people in two different boxes that had no meaning other than a crude division. It is a bad idea to label someone „low functioning“.

    In any case, I‘d really like to not discuss these basics too much anymore because they have been discussed at length a thousand times already. I suggest you buy a book or read online to get these basics down.

    Books I liked: Unmasking Autism by Devon Price, The complete guide on aspergers syndrome by tony attwood and my wife is currently reading a hidden force by ed thompson and one more that I cant find the name of. I hope this helps.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    I get your point. But you have to accept that autism and the community around it is like a billion years younger than lgbtq. It’s a good idea to work out this stuff but it will take time.

    Sure, but that doesn't mean we cannot use what worked for them.

    We too have to deal with all sorts of stereotypes and myths meant to make us look like absolute demons. It is worth looking at how they overcame that.

    Also, low and high functioning never had anything to do with being able to live alone. It was derogatory because it split people in two different boxes that had no meaning other than a crude division. It is a bad idea to label someone „low functioning“.

    I can accept "low functioning" probably isn't the kind of label to be using. You might have noticed I've been avoiding using it. There are other possible labels for those who need more assistance.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 2 years ago

    Exactly. Now we have found points to agree on. On both counts I‘m fully with you. We should absoputely take a page out of their book here and there and we can help people define themselves once we understand the autistic condition (which we dont at this point).

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago*

    While not Google Translate, it's a more advanced translation service.

    AI is surprisingly advanced and there's a lot more towards translation than you might think. But you're right: AI absolutely sucks at nuances it isn't trained on. That's pretty much the reason ChatGPT and other "general purpose AIs" will always perform (much) worse than specialized ones.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I don't know if there's a great way to compare AI vs worthless recruiters, so finding something objective might be difficult. AI is going to pick up on systemic biases in reality and I'm not sure you can sanitize the data enough to avoid that.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 2 years ago

    I agree that this is unfortunate. I think what I‘m trying to say is that we see this in AI while recruiting in most companies is trash and most people familiar with AI have no knowledge of how bad recruiting actually is.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago*

    I think the bias issues will always be there, but usually worsened, less detected (or delayed detection), and exacerbated when the people working on the original problem do not suffer such issues. Eg: if most people working on facial recognition are white and male.

    While I do have my reservation with AI technologies, I think this is a worthwhile effort that the people encountering the same issues work to identify and address them, especially in this case they lead the effort, rather than just be a consultant on it.

    They can lead the effort on collecting new data, or adapt new ways of looking at data, metricizing objectives in a more appropriate manner for the targeted audience. Based on the article, I think they are doing this.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    It really depends on how/what the AI was trained on. In this case, I would expect to to be biased toward NDs, not against them.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    How would a bias towards NDs work?

    ND is a wiiiiide spectrum of conditions, and even within those conditions, you have subsets of quirks that are rare if not unique to a person.

    How would an AI know how to tailor its operating methods and communication?

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    By being trained on how that wide range of NDs communicate, what their symptoms are, how medical professionals diagnose them, etc.

    NDs tend to recognize other NDs; if we can do it, an AI sure as hell can.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    By being trained on how that wide range of NDs communicate, what their symptoms are, how medical professionals diagnose them, etc.

    That's the problem. The standard for NDs in terms of how they communicate can be literally anything that isn't typical of an NT. Same with symptoms, and even medical professionals can often fuck up diagnoses.

    NDs tend to recognize other NDs; if we can do it, an AI sure as hell can.

    There are plenty of NDs that are very good at masking. To the point where no one would be able to tell just by looking at them.

    And an AI doesn't have the same datasets you do. You can look at their body language, listen to their voice, etc. Any privacy respecting AI will have to go from written language alone. And have fun adapting your model for other languages!

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