Artificial intelligence and the dignity of risk

Abstract

The increased use of AI-based systems poses risks and opportunities for people with cognitive disabilities. On the one hand, automated administrative systems, such as job applicant screeners, may disadvantage people whose patterns of strengths and weaknesses, and whose life circumstances, differ from those commonly seen in pools of data. On the other hand, people with cognitive disabilities stand to gain from AI's potential to provide superior support, such as speaker-dependent speech recognition. Further, privacy concerns are heightened, both because of greater likelihood that people with uncommon combinations of attributes can be identified from their data, and because of the potential for discrimination and exploitation. It is important that people with disabilities are able to make self-directed choices about the tradeoffs among risks and benefits, not denying them the dignity of risk that others have. Enabling this calls for advances both in technology and in organization.