Hacker News Reader

Comment by la6479 | Hacker News Reader

THis is where rubber meets the road. Show me how AI can make life easier for autistic people and their caregivers , mentally challenged people and their caregiver and I will believe in the promise of AI.

View on HN

It has infinite patience as a teacher in an infinitesimal number of detail oriented specific areas where others would fail. It can maintain perspective on longer term goals and repetition and such through proven autism treatment pathways like CBT/speech therapies where humans be prohibitively expensive or would tire. That's surely something? It can reinforce bringing detail out to generalities. That helps for some. I'd say pedagogy and communications therapy are therefore both clear areas of promise.

These are viable for the population as a whole, not just people with autism or identified learning difficulties.

in a better world your vision would be very promising. in our world, ill bet 'different' people are gonna get lumped in with old people, to be placated by robots instead of being allowed community engagement.

Don't blame others. Inaction is the only thing between you and a better world. Go do something about it.

Dismantle car centrism all by yourself?

while I do feel obliged to share my compute with wider humanity, it must be noted that commanding me to perform my obligation does remove what meagre autonomy i could claim from the process. if your goal is to encourage compute sharing, you may wish to reexamine your employment of imperatives. or in other words, telling a dickhead like me to do something is more likely to result in you getting told to fuck off than it is for me to do the action being commanded. but I see your intentions are true so I don't need to do that. thanks and all the best

thick_skin certainly isn't your play is it ;)

yea, you got any world saving plans in the works? im currently working on ones of my own, was carer for an elder family member many years before, didnt have the bandwidth then. nowadays i could lend some time if you have a cool way of fixing things.

Not especially. I'm working on feeding people more efficiently which sounds dystopian but disintermediates the population from some corporations who currently dominate such matters and have not shown themselves to be morally or environmentally responsible. I would make a lot more money if I worked on military drones, financial leeching apparatus or AI bullshit like everyone else, but at this point I would prefer to have less and be better behaved.

AI certainly makes it easier for me with ADHD (and probably Autism too, they often go together).

It helps me do planning and research which are the boring parts of a project for me and I abhor them so I tend to procrastinate so long that the project is no longer relevant. AI helps me get through this phase much more easily.

I cannot see why this litmus test is either necessary nor sufficient for evaluating the success of LLMs.

> make life easier for autistic people

Where life does not come with an instruction manual, I've found it useful to ask AI, "hey, I got kicked out of a social group (again), what happened?", and AI is able to tell me what it is I did wrong and what to do differently next time. There is a danger of AI psychosis, and autistic people I've discussed this with have had varying levels of luck with this strategy, depending on how honest they are able to be with themselves and the machine, but AI has helped facilitate difficult conversations for me. Eg Say I want to tell someone they "fucking suck and to go kill themselves". Obviously that's not very nice. My caregivers don't deserve to be told that. AI is able to help me find the words that aren't that, while helping me figure out the words I need to communicate the underlying issue. My human therapist is only available one hour a week and doesn't come cheap. Friends only have so much patience. AI is available 24/7 and is much more affordable.

It's able to tell you something that sounds right. That doesn't mean it is right.

One low hanging fruit is that it can file their taxes. Boom, that'll save a few hours and like $100 a person. After that, it's just a matter of your creativity.

We have a marvelous thing in developed countries where the IRS (equivalent) already knows how much your tax should be paying[0] and you basically have to just look at a few numbers and click "That seems right". They even have a form where you can change things that aren't correct! Marvelous, I know... we've had that for 15+ years in Denmark.

EDIT: To add, if you get it slightly wrong... you're fine, it'll be adjusted for in next year's taxes.

[0] ...because it has to, in order to investigate evasion.

You're just one step away from all the money just going straight to the government, then they decide how much goes back to you ;)

I'm not sure I get your point. Can you elaborate?

Tax filing in the US being so deeply intertwined with proprietary software is extremely unfortunate. I actually emailed Richard Stallman the first time I had to file to see what he does. He basically recommended grabbing the forms as PDFs, using xournalpp to edit/sign them, then print and mail them the old-fashioned way. I did do this but I found the process clunky and upsetting. I would kill to have some official government thing that's free software and covers all the common cases, or to have it automated like in other countries. I simply should not have to do this myself, it's ridiculous. I don't care about a tax refund either, just don't make me do this at all. Maybe leave the process optional for those who want to try to game the system and get some money back.

I don't see AI as a solution here as it's all rather murky and proprietary.

It's not proprietary, they (tax companies) just want you to think that. It is very murky though, but you can fill out and file the proper forms yourself if you know what you're doing. Apparently, even the models last filing season did a great job. My uncle has been an accountant and done a lot of the family's taxes for decades. He did a parallel comparison and the llm did it perfectly. The models have improved since then as well.

Of course, if you're (imo rightly) concerned with your data, you'll have to run them locally.

The neurodivergent community thoroughly and resoundingly rejects AI and for damn good reason.

I'm neurodivergent, you do not speak for me.

That's cool, but what about the actual neurodivergent people?

I'm neurodivergent (got all the proper stamps and papers and everything) and I think it's very useful in the right places

Reply on news.ycombinator.com