Cyborg Meets AI with Dr. Ashley Shew
Human Context of Science and Technology Program
Location
Online
Date & Time
October 22, 2024, 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Description
Ashley Shew
Associate Professor, Department of Science, Technology, and Society, Virginia Tech
Join us for a talk by Dr. Shew related to her new book, Against Technoablism.
Cyborg Meets AI: Technologized Disabled People in the Context of Corporatized Technological Development and Health Management
There are many dangers of having parts of your body owned, managed, or
maintained by companies and/or managed care -- to be cyborg is to be
tracked and surveilled as a regular feature of being a disabled person.
I'll speak about state programs that use electronic visit verification
for personal attendant care, about a bionic eye company that went belly
up (and left people without sight), about a company that shifted away
from a product for lower income folks and left people with unusable
cochlear implants in their heads (and no support for repair or
replacement), about social media surveillance in denying people
disability benefits, about where increased use of AI will overlook some
disabled people and look extra hard at others (with implications for
education, jobs, and public life). Some of these cases are to help us
think about future AI (and don't constitute AI themselves), but I think
are important to understanding the context of being disabled in our
society, and regularly living with and relying on technologies. We need
historical and lived context for considering, evaluating, and setting
prudent policies forth for AI development.
Organized by the Human Context of Science and Technology program and the Critical Disability Studies Minor.
Cosponsored
by the Designing Participatory Futures Lab; Department of English; Department of Media and Communication Studies; Department of
Philosophy; Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Public
Health; and the Global Studies Program.
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