IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2020 - 48

in this essay, Artificial Intelligence research and AIs currently under development contain several inscriptions of
technoableism that I want to warn against. I also want to
gesture to an emerging frame for considering appropriate
disability technology, called Crip Technoscience [16].
The current mood is one of optimism about machine
learning and Artificial Intelligence for disability applications. Headlines scream about it: "How AI Could Transform the Lives of Disabled People" [10], "How Artificial
Intelligence Can Help With Disabilities" [19], and "Artificial
Intelligence Poised to Improve Lives of People with Disabilities" [46]. Sometimes these headlines acknowledge
AI's potential for helping people as they age (correctly
assuming that older folks are more likely to have disabilities), hyping the potential for robot caregivers and AI
emotional support "animals" - AI that can take the place
of human carers or friends, often at a lower financial
cost: "Artificial Intelligence Could Improve How We Age"
[29], "Can China Win the Artificial Intelligence Race by
Serving the Elderly?" [18], and "Robot Caregivers are Saving the Elderly from Lives of Loneliness" [43].
These breathless headlines make clear the assumptions
that ground the articles that follow them - assumptions
about what it is to be disabled and what it is to age. (These
articles tend to lump disability and aging together, and I
therefore examine the two together, but there are important
differences between these demographic groups in terms of
stigma, access, convenience, societal narrative, and consideration.) Like earlier technological interventions on disabled
lives, these technologies rely on assumptions about the disabled and aging individual rather than the environment. For
example, ideas about the importance of independence factor heavily into coverage of AI for disabled and older folks,
and are particularly clear in discussions around autonomous vehicles, companion robots (like Paro), home-based
applications (like Alexa), and caretaking robots. All of these
technologies emphasize aging and disability as problems for
individual consumers, rather than problems for society.12
Why should the lack of accessible transport for people who
cannot drive be a problem for the non-driver rather than for
society? Why should the loneliness and isolation experienced by people who cannot easily leave their homes be
solved by in-home robots rather than by better planning and
infrastructure within our communities?
12

This is not unique to AI, of course. There are many existing technologies and gadgets that were originally designed to increase the independence of disabled and/or aging users and that contribute to ease of
independent living for all people: kitchen gadgets that arthritic hands can
hold (the OXO line is designed on this premise), hot water heaters that
don't require the lifting of a heavy tea kettle [11], grabbers and reachers,
pre-cut and pre-peeled fruits and vegetables, medical alerts, handrails and
ramps, mobility devices, and accessible bathrooms. All of these technologies were designed to increase disabled people's independence, and they
all also enable aging in place with more independence. Liz Jackson's New
York Times article "We Are The Original Lifehackers" is a must-read on
this topic: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/opinion/disability-design
-lifehacks.html [20].

48

AI designers are clearly focused on changing the individual to fit the environment rather than the other way
around. For example, many of the "conveniences" offered
by AI applications are mostly conveniences for the benefit
of the user's family, rather than the users themselves.
These technologies are framed as unburdening families
from worry by enabling them to remotely monitor or
check in on their loved one's condition; as reducing the
financial costs of hiring human caretakers; and as combating the user's isolation and loneliness, thus requiring
fewer visits from family members. When AI technology is
framed as helping the family, it positions disabled and old
people as recipients of care rather than as agents in their
own lives, and it decenters them and their experiences,
instead moving the nondisabled family members into the
center of the story (which also fails to recognize that disabled people can have disabled family members and can
be caregivers themselves).
This same centering of ability is produced by the narratives' focus on independence as the main goal of disability
design. Indeed, the nearly obsessive focus on independence is another "tell" for ableism. As Elliott Kukla writes:
We are born needing care and die needing care, and
I am no exception. At brief moments in the middle
of life, we hold the illusion of independence, but we
are always driving on roads we did not build, eating
foods we did not pick or raise. Allowing the illusion
of my own independence to drop away unmasked a
fundamental truth of being human [24].
This sentiment echoes throughout current disability
studies: we are all interdependent, and independence has
always already been an illusion.13 But disabled and old people have often needed to advocate for independence,
because they have historically been the subject of laws, de
facto rules, and public norms that deny them full citizenship, access, and opportunity to participate in public life.
For example, early disability activism of the 1970s and
1980s produced a movement called the independent living
movement. The name - independent living - indicates a
reaction to the historical framing of disabled people as
completely dependent, as objects to be moved around by
nondisabled people. Despite the name, this movement was
not about independence in the sense of isolation, total
responsibility for one's own needs, and total avoidance of
inconvenience to nondisabled people - the values that
underpin current narratives about AI. Instead, the movement was about the right to a public life, a life outside of
institutions - an interdependent life. It demanded community living (the slogan "Our Homes, Not Nursing Homes!"),
13

There is a good discussion of this in Sunaura Taylor's Beasts of Burden
[44] and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's Care Work [35].

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

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MARCH 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/opinion/disability-design-lifehacks.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/opinion/disability-design-lifehacks.html
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2020

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