 Welcome again, and so my name is Roy. So I'm the director for IBM's accessibility research team and such a great honor to be here with you and also with the distinguished panel here and so the panel this panel is about the impact of artificial intelligence on the sensibility and What I'll do is I will give a short introduction and then we'll let the panelists introduce themselves before we dive into the discussions And I hope to leave about five ten minutes at the end the four questions So Peter when how much time do we have one hour? Okay, we have one hour. It's 10 30 now So I like to begin with you know accessibility. What does accessibility mean in technology, right? This is about reinventing the relationship between humans and technology to ensure that people with all abilities Have equal sex access to to technology and to information So I would say we're in a time Where accessibility is more important and full of opportunities than ever largely driven by three Areas three drivers, right? I wouldn't is essentially the Emergence of technology new technologies at record pace and many of you work in the technology field I don't need to say too much the second is the demand for accessibility has been increasing and Today we're talking about a 1.2 billion people with disabilities in this world And as the Asian Democrats shift is happening quickly that number is going to increase much faster Many of you probably already realize and we're at the tipping point where people 65 and older is Exceeding the population of young children five and younger for the first time in human history and among the You know the aging population people 60 and older 40% of them have at least one disability and many of them acquire over time multiple disabilities in coupled with Chronic diseases, that's a second driving force the third one. I like to add it is because I mean I would say More than ever people actually have the empathy Passion into the asthma accessibility because I just came from Grace Harper conference I was so touched by these young students their commitment and also they are Awareness about accessibility. I ended up with a stack of resumes for people want to work in accessibility research area So extremely exciting. So these are the three, you know driving forces reshaping the landscape of accessibility So that's essentially a short introduction of the topic and so now I like to have our distinguished panel To introduce themselves. How about we start a start with you sassy My name is sassy outwater, right and I am the director of the Massachusetts Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired and My background is in UX user experience and I specialize in intersectionality disability and society and Technology and how those three things enter play with one another The social ramifications of using AI within user experience and within assistive technology, especially in the areas of instruction The Massachusetts Association for the Blind and the Visually Impaired just recently launched the Vibrant program Which specifically teaches seniors and those who are aging with vision loss to use assistive technology and The UX implications of this are huge and we're just now diving into all of it But AI is becoming one of the most important tools that we have to work with seniors with Vision loss and other disabilities, especially when multiple disabilities intersect. I have a mic I'm sujeet sujeet Kanaganti I'm the CTO at Ira. I have various Technological background right from robotics industrial automation networking cloud. I've been in the Hardware and software space for a while And now I'm with the Ira building Ira product I've been leading Ira for the past two years building the product right from its scratch and now leading Implementing AI in the Ira product itself to bring Greater services to the visually impaired Tom Hi, I'm Tom Newman. I'm the chief technical officer at Reddendever We are providing a virtual reality solution to senior living communities in order to help improve quality of life My background is in software development and computer science Well, good morning. Yeah, still morning. I'm Will Walker. I'm vice president of product at a company called open access technologies We focus on accessible content My past has been around developing new technologies for screen reading and for accessibility I was involved in the Early access of the API based approach to screen reading that got rid of virtual buffers that led to Various things such as the Linux accessibility product where we led the Orca screen reader, which is one of the best screen readers for Linux available today And so I come to this space with that kind of background and perspective Good morning. My name is Michael Altman. I'm director of research at the MIT libraries I'm a reformed computer scientist and then a reformed quantitative social scientist and now an information scientist My my research has focused on things like the role of information communication technology and politics and and the way that people participate in developing information and now focuses on Scully communication and how we managed and disseminate knowledge and in the university and through research I'm new to accessibility formally, although I've had an interest in accessibility technologies for for a couple decades for family reasons, but we last few years we've started to look at Learning and the the elements of learning and online systems and how that affects people with learning disabilities and We have a new very exploratory project on looking at library and information systems and what design principles make them more inclusive and accessible I Would have to say what an impressive panel you would all agree with me, right? And so yeah Let's waste no time to pick their brains. So I like to start with AI, right? Artificial intelligence, that's the main topic. It's it's a buzzword and exactly a month ago I BM announced two hundred forty million dollars of investment over the next ten years to have a joint AI lab with MIT and As you can imagine many tech companies are making huge investment in in AI So we're like to you know get your view because you've been accessibility for a long time and also AI is Is a new emerging thing. So what's your view in terms of AI and machine learning? How would they impact accessibility? Sure I'm gonna go back to some of the early work we did with which I call the API based approach to accessibility and What that enabled people to do and this was back in the early 90s and in mid 90s and so on It enabled screen readers to get inside the running application Okay, and it provided very compelling access to applications the screen reader no longer had to guess what was inside there It could clear the application directly I'm very proud of that work by the same time I think it's time to move on and it's potentially time to get rid of that and the problem that it led to Was that in order to get this API based approach Accessibility to work it required cooperation from the people writing the GUI toolkits and the people writing the applications And you'll see that with aria today. Okay, you'll see the Accessibility guidelines people have to implement the toolkit. They have to implement the API And what that causes is a big lag So new technology comes out and there's an accessibility lag between the time that technology comes out and it's made accessible Okay, so what I see is a potential here, and I'm not saying it's it's gonna come true But what I see as a potential is that artificial intelligence can now start getting rid of the need for an API to dig inside the application it can actually infer and and Determine what's being presented on the screen by artificial intelligence And do you have some examples of you know product and services already taken advantage of AI and also from your Development experience years of development experience how AI can be woven into The technology development process Well, let me let me say how I can imagine it would be okay So I think Kiyoko's talk was very very wonderful about real-world accessibility, and I think that's beautiful and wonderful and valid We're still gonna be sitting behind screens of glass that are presenting Information to us. Okay, so I can imagine now When the new cool kid comes along five years from now that says he's got a brand new technology And all that brand new technology is is another way to draw a push button on the screen Okay I think what we can do is have artificial intelligence be the thing to recognize This is a push button and they can help guide the user through the interface and not only be able to guide the user through Small pieces of the interface like individual components as a push button This is a checkbox but also be able to provide summarization of what's being presented to them on the screen Yeah, thank you very insightful very insightful now Let's also take a look at the reason we actually develop these new technology in AI is really to improve people's life Right, and we have some of the panelists like entrepreneur and working in on gadgets working on platforms Right to inform people's life And so I like to pose a question to you a suggest Tom and also sassy and how can digital and AI? Innovation enhance independence and improve quality of life And especially we're talking about the aging population 90% of those people say they want to age in place They want to age in their own home and they want to live independently So like to get your view about AI and digital Technology can enhance and improve people's quality of life who'd like to go first. Okay. Sure. I could go first So we use virtual reality with the aging population to do exactly that to try and improve their quality of life and the reality is that for a lot of people physical travel is difficult and rare and we can use VR to Open up the world for them again We can take people to places They may have always wanted to go but didn't have a chance to visit For example, we can take them on a tour of Paris or to the top of Mount Everest We can bring them back to places that are important to them like their child at home they can walk the streets of the neighborhood they grew up in and we can also let them be there for important moments in the lives of family members so they can attend say the granddaughter's wedding taking place on another continent and a lot of people think of VR as sort of inherently isolating but we've made it a Social experience you can do all of these things together and I actually think VR has a lot of potential to Bring people together. It allows you to have a sense of presence with someone You can sort of feel as if you are actually in the same space as another person who might be on the other side of the world Which I think can can make a huge difference for people Actually, I was sharing with him that thing I eat my father's in his 80s and now in his bed He know can no longer move and he actually always want to go Disney when Disney first opened in share I was asking Tom. Can you you know? Can you give me that kind of give my father that kind of experience, right? He's he's dreaming about it. Thank you Tom and And in sassy and suggest would you like to add? Yeah, sure. We at Ira. We provide We develop services for the visually impaired So what we do is like connect the visually impaired with a human in the loop like a sighted person Who is sitting behind a computer at a remote location be it anywhere in the U.S. as of now What we do is we equip the Visually impaired with a pair of smart glasses and do a live video streaming from the user space to a agent or I'd agent what we call sitting behind the computer and having the first point of video from the first point of view and Will be Hey, John. Yeah Yeah, John as of now is wearing ira smart glasses and he's an ira explorer Probably John. I think will you able to do a demo? But yeah, that's a last call in the last minute call, but we'll see But okay. Yeah, so what we do is like we connect the users to remote agents and remote agents will be able to relay information through the video that's coming in from the smart glasses and it they're like ample scenarios where user needs information from a Set person and they can rely on our service Say take the case of going for a shopping user wants to do his own shopping independently Isn't he wants to go to a grocery store pick up the items like brownies, whatever he likes the specific ones I rise and will be able to help using the video feed that is coming in Say user is traveling is it an airport? He needs to clear the check-in go to the gate I rise and will be able to again help the person in real time and AI is also playing a role in making this more accessible Both on the agent side and also on the user side on the agent side. We do provide more Enriched information to the agent so that agent need not search For that information specifically based on the need but it pops up automatically So that it becomes faster for agent to provide other relay the information and from user point of view There are a lot of other capabilities being added Which is like identifying Persons in front of them detecting their emotions like we use a lot of available AI technologies to bring this accessibility to the users Be it IBM Watson. We are which we are trying and there are other providers In space of like facial recognition or image recognition or object recognition. We also enabling the system To have a voice-based interaction where user can interact with the system using speech and System will be able to provide the information and if in case it unable to Find that information it can automatically connect to an agent and agent can relay that information Thank you and sassy. Would you like to provide a your view? Yeah, so For the aging population you have physical disability and cognitive disability in the intersections in pretty unique places that don't Often happen in the rest of the population and you see AI stepping in whether it be from a neurological point of view Tom brought up a very valuable tool that helps recover from dementia and stroke memory loss triggering Memory and cognition skills through the use of sensory input is a valuable use of AI And when combined with EEG monitoring and functional magnetic resonance imaging you can be looking at what the brain if the person say with dementia is is going through and the virtual reality can respond to that using AI algorithms and can Continue to feed a person a certain experience or memory or something that is triggering a sensory response Turning into a memory response or an envisioned response of a future event and it gives neurologists a whole new viewpoint of dementia and Brain recovery and traumatic brain injury. This is used a lot with At least from the research standard right now with veterans That have TBI traumatic brain injury and is a valuable tool for Neurological recovery for Patients who have lost the ability to speak or the lost the ability to move certain parts of their body memory experiences can trigger You know the beginnings of nerve Responses in limbs things like that So there's a whole bunch of research in the medical side of disability that especially intersects with seniors and the other piece of AI that intersects here is what will touched on with screen readers for the blind and low vision population we see a lot of Screen reader lag from accessibility and a senior comes in and they want the same experience that they had a year ago as a Fully-sighted individual now they've lost a significant amount of vision and can't have that experience or they haven't used technology and they're entering into that Space now that they need to rely on technology to Do things that their vision used to accomplish for them And there's a lot of emotions that get brought up with that experience anger frustration fear sorrow and and AI I Call it the smart screen reader theory. It's not Completely in practice yet, but certain certain spaces. You're starting to see screen readers Do that inference process that will was talking about where they can look at a web page or an app And infer things that the coder maybe didn't get in there correctly from accessibility guideline perspective so the screen reader is now Evolving away from the traditional screen reader model and turning into something that can infer context and infer action based on what it's seeing and I think this is brilliant because it's starting to eliminate that accessibility lag that we've Traditionally dealt with and that need for somebody to remember to include me in the process of creating an app or a website and That is a huge Benefit for seniors because they're going to be included in more and more and feel less and less isolated And can continue to feel like they can still thrive without having to go into skilled nursing thus reducing you know Medicare costs and AI can be used to monitor homes to Interface with caregiving professionals so that seniors can stay in their homes longer and thrive and use autonomy and choice to continue to Self-direct your care later and later in life Well, thank you. And so we touched how new technology special AI can impact people's lives What about culture because I mean this group of people here We are all here to cultivate an inclusive and diversity culture, which is extremely important so like to also hear your view in terms of The panelists in terms of how AI and also need these new technology can really cultivate The inclusive and also the diversity culture So I have one I think really good example of how this can be possible. So Google has very recently released headphones that can Translate in real time to 40 different languages Which makes it easier to travel to communicate and to understand one another and I really think that's incredible progress One other example is that virtual reality is being used in empathy training So the basic idea being that you can see what it's like to be in another person's shoes You can experience a scenario from their perspective or even the ability to virtually see where they're actually from is powerful I think yeah So he says he that's a great example to him like even for the hearing impaired the speech to Text translation the AI system that's involved behind the technology. It will help them Go to any person and even talk to a person who is not Conversant with the sign language that way he can interact with more people and It I rather we do Have agents which are like diversified spread across and we bring in like multiple kinds of people with connect to the agents That also kind of makes them include inclusive using their technology Facial recognition is a huge part of this conversation, especially for the deaf blind community because the blind population can rely on hearing somebody's voice For most of our social interactions and the deaf community can use Just looking across the room But if you are deaf-blind and you walk into a conference space like this and you're trying to identify somebody you are pretty much reliant on them identifying themselves to you So facial recognition is a huge as that begins to improve and evolve will will continue to become a huge defining moment for deaf-blind, especially in employment situations The other thing that I see and I'm doing kind of my panel on this later this afternoon or my workshop on Assistive technology and AI where they intersect as far as social and diversity needs with regards to ethics and with regards to inclusivity in best accessibility practices, so where do we say That web developers are responsible for continuing to code using WCAG to standards and You know making things accessible and where do we say oh the AI can pick up? Facebook is a classic example of this where Facebook is launching this AI tool to describe photos But it can't capture everything and it's taught to filter and identify certain parts of a picture I always call it the Facebook beard quandary Facebook likes to identify people with beards, so you'll hear picture Two people standing beard feet outdoor water Just these list of random Adjectives and and nouns and you're going okay, so there's a beard and some feet in this picture and some what I don't what It's helpful to an extent, but we're not there yet And we're reliant on the filters that are built into that AI so we're going to later this afternoon I'll get really in depth as to how that can affect real life situations for a disabled person Yeah, thank you says he I think you also heard I mean from Chiakos talk this morning and some of the facial Recognitions already there. She demoed right? It's awesome So now let's take into of some specific technology area Werewolves and robots and where do you see the kind of role they will play in accessibility and some can be controversial like a robot Right, it's it's new, but wearables already here So like to hear hear the panelists view about you know specifically on wearables and robots Sure, so I think there are already a few things on the market in terms of robotics that can help make life a little bit Easier you can have a robot to clean your floors mow your lawn. There are some things coming out that can cook for you Which is is interesting. It's great, and I think we're seeing Robots that can do more and more of what a human caregiver would do and I think for the most part This is is great robots are infinitely patient. There's no feeling of burden. They're available 24 7 365 I do have one actual concern in this space, which is that the truth is for a lot of people a Good portion of their human interaction is with their caregiver and as Robots do more and more we may see the sum total of human interaction for some of these people decline Yeah, we still have to charge them I Get the the savior complex I call it I get approached Monthly or more by people who have designed the latest wearable that will help blind people see Which I think is a valuable contribution in and of itself to research and understanding But devalues a the travel skills that are innate in a blind or low vision person be the power of a mobility tool So there are wearables from t-shirts to helmets with lasers to Different belts with different haptic feedback There's all these different pieces of technology, and I think collectively they do represent Advance means in what we can learn from our environment, but they are not going to cure my blindness as of yet They would have to do eyeball transplants to do that and they're not going to Replace a mobility tool in any healthy context yet Maybe we'll get there in five or ten years But it's not like we need a cure saving we need enhancements So I think as we move forward in designing AI, how can we enhance until we get to the point where we can be talking about a cure or a Device that can replace the robo guide dog or the robo cane or something We're not there yet, and I think we need to be cognizant of that, which is why I love era. I rescue me because It combines human centered assistance and autonomy with enhanced mobility function and doesn't replace a cane Or a guide dog or any other travel skills and tools it enhances, and that's where we need to be focused I also want to jump in a little bit in that I think AI offers us the opportunity to start addressing new disability populations Okay, so we had a lot of focus on blindness here But I think there's also people with pervasive development of disabilities people with autism people of Aspergers That can benefit from this technology Not only because it's because it's getting smarter because it's getting smaller and more portable and easier to manage Okay, so for example people with autism may have trouble Understanding normal visual cues okay normal social cues from people And I've seen research of this was like maybe 20 years ago or 15 years ago Where somebody came up with a big headset for a person with autism to wear that went over their head and it was on their chest And it gave them the Some some feedback about what somebody was thinking are they happy are they sad are they angry are they bored now? Anybody that knows somebody with autism would say this is absolutely nonsense because they have such sensory Disabilities that come along with that are sensory issues. I'm not gonna wear a helmet But we're now 15 years beyond that and things are smaller faster and smarter And I think it may be time to start looking at how to address new disability segments Yeah, as we'll say it in the space of like autism robots can definitely help interact with children Like and enhance their communication skills and make them understand better Robots can also help elderly As Tom said they can be a good companion, but it's still not there. So they need to be more reliable And in terms of wearable, I would say yeah, there is some momentum like a lot of wearable devices now Monitor elderly people and can provide alerts and feedback and even in the space of like hearing impaired Yeah, we can do and I would be integration into the various devices and provide a haptic feedback to the hearing impaired So that way a lot of information will be accessible Anybody else like to add All right, if not actually, I mean, let's take a look at we already looked at how new technology will benefit people and Cultivate help us cultivate a new culture, right? But on the other hand as anything new technology always face the adoption and so now also let's take a look at it Micah maybe pick your brain now because you haven't talked too much yet And so, you know what factors and both technological and and societal do you see it's going to either accelerate or hinder Adoption of new AI because I mean when talk about, you know, if you look at our population the millennials the young kids sitting here No problem with digital but your grandparents probably are not a comfortable with the smartphone even right let alone robots and AI and And actually quite interesting when I was at the the mobile water Congress and some people even talk about they fear about AI Are we going to controlled by aliens and so so like to hear you about your view in terms of adoption and you know What can accelerate such a new technology and what could it be barriers? I'll step back from AI particularly and just look at at technologies in general and look globally if you look at the The possible beneficiaries of of this technology and others they're all over the world and Most of them have cell phones and most of them don't have Computers they're far more. They're more have cell phones than have toilets And far more by orders of magnitude than there are our libraries though We like to help so thinking about Thing you know in a technical sense thinking that things that are accessible to people Well over the world where connectivity may be intermittent where they may be running on Previous generations of devices that will certainly increase diffusion institutional factors like Government support for that sort of dissemination to people who who who need the technologies but are not Not in the wealthy industrial countries, but even within countries things like Intellectual property so are these are these technologies open our can we Can we build on them? Are they standardized and we heard about AI as a sort of a way to eliminate standards and that's great at bridges where we're no standards are available But it also builds on so many standards for for information communication for even even for the electricity to plug in your system so you need a whole set and to be able to build on and Finally, I think empowerment is a key in in diffusing technologies Supporting people's ability not just to you know ingest information but to communicate to communicate with each other to then To collaborate to produce things together to advocate and to collect information on their life experience and their needs And and I guess I'd end with one is that the more valuable we can make these technologies to everyone the faster this is going to be Diffused and when we we're increasingly looking at things like autism or HDA ADHD not as binary disabilities, but as characteristics on a spectrum of In which we we all have Different characteristics to these degrees and the extent to which we can have our Systems adapt to us We in my research we look at the building blocks of root learning You know everybody when they learn they have to get things into memory long-term memory into short-term memory And have the right level arousal have the the right cognitive load pay attention These are all building blocks that we can start to detect and adapt to they may differ in different populations I'm paying attention with my eyes other people may pay attention in different ways But they they are all things that if our systems adapt to them, we will learn better. We will communicate better Anybody like to add go ahead. Yeah, I would like to echo the the reliability part like yeah The systems needs to be more reliable. We cannot have an AI wheelchair climbing a stair Steer stair stair stairways and then tripping off and there needs to be more standards and interoperability So that AI as in standalone doesn't kind of work It needs to be integrated to a lot of their systems So these needs to be proper standardization and interoperability within these systems and number three definitely the government regulations Like if you have to have support for autonomous cars that are going on roads Then we need to have proper regulations and it might take a while for it to come out And I think IBM is already working towards that Yeah, that's one of the key factor I would just like to add one thing So there's a bit of a virtuous circle in AI development and AI needs a lot of data to do a good job and In order for AI to be adopted rapidly it needs to do its job very well And I think it would be very helpful if a lot of the larger organizations that are accumulating huge amounts of data Would be willing to share it because that helps people Innovate it helps them compete and we end up with more and better systems faster Yeah, totally agree I think and people sharing data is a very important aspect because now they were saying the data is a new natural resources Everybody want to hold on to that resources, right? I think Tom touched such a good point How can we essentially make people more open-minded? share the data and I think where you also like to add something I do have one and it's Related to it. What's the risk of AI is it's the risk of what if it doesn't work, okay? And I think anybody in here doing work right now on accessibility And you're doing mainstream product. Don't stop right? Don't say I'm just gonna wait for the AI guys to solve the problem That's a huge risk. It's a huge danger. Okay, so anybody coming into the space and doing AI research keep going All right, we want it. We want it really bad, but don't depend upon it being The magic the silver bullet. Yeah, I would say good point as it comes to the innovators dilemma You have new things coming out Do I stop working on the current stuff continue work on it because it's gonna take a while for AI to be mature And so this essentially also touched another point in terms of you know AI Do you see any of the downside when it comes to AI and robotics and for accessibility? Because I think we need to be aware of that as there are a lot of benefits But like everything else right you always have the you know flip side and What are the flip potential flip sides and how do we prepare for that? building on what will said I Call it bring your own ramp So if a wheelchair user went to a restaurant and there was no ramp to get into the restaurant You can't look at them and say oh you're supposed to bring your own You can't carry equipment Constantly with you that would bridge accessibility gaps in every situation So it goes directly back to what will is saying we look at the digital and the technological space and we're as AI advances more and more and this touches back to what I made in my last point You know we can't substitute good accessibility guideline best practices With AI at this point we have to keep doing both So I see the pitfall being that companies are releasing AI and they're saying okay So now that this thing is out in the world functioning. We don't have to continue to Uphold accessibility standards. We can just let the AI do it and we can take the people who were on our team doing Accessibility and put them towards something else now. So you see accessibility fall off in some pretty significant ways When AI steps in in some companies and in some situations and we need to be hyper vigilant on that because people lose out In some pretty significant ways. I've seen this in the financial sector. I've seen this in Social media certainly I've seen it in educational environments And it's really detrimental because you start making these huge advances in accessibility best practices and Implementation of them and then you release a tool that's supposed to automate it and do it for you and people turn their attention away and Across the disabled disability population. It doesn't matter what disability it is Someone's gonna get it someone's gonna suffer for it. So we cannot do that yet. We're not at that point yet. I See several of them just tried in the jump in I was only going to say really that I think there is a risk in Being too dependent too quickly as you say I think you know We're making incredible progress and in computer vision, especially and some tools can actually If they make mistakes be dangerous. So if an object is misidentified, you could hurt yourself if Street isn't a street. It's a hole. That's the problem. So I Think we will get there, but we need to be careful about timelines Just like Pepsi for beer, right exactly Yeah, Pepsi for beer is good But if it is something else if it is a one person to another person, it will be a tricky situation Yeah, definitely that way we are thinking towards having human in the loop Till the technology is like kind of mature enough and say it's like 100% foolproof Which might take years and a lot of innovation Goes into that and definitely I would request the youngsters who are working on the technology to be at par on that and Make it more mature So I'll quote Melvin the historian Melvin Cranburg whose first law of technology was that Technology is neither good nor evil neither is it neutral and and what it means is that Technology is disruptive and the more powerful the technology the more potentially disruptive. This is AI is really powerful and if we Look at the the potential Although, you know, we're not techno utopians. We know that The telegraph didn't usher in world peace neither did the radio to telegraph. I mean telephone Etc. Etc. The last 200 years of technology have been Incredibly impactful in terms of our our well-being range of choices information. We have in health, but There are all sorts of systemic effects if we're relying on AI We're relying on AI to make decisions for us not right now. They're simple decisions They're going to be increasingly complex. Who governs that? How do we how do we understand what those are? Who's accountable for it? What happens if it we it makes a decision that? In retrospect causes you to do something that hurts someone We we have we need to make AI governable We also need to make sure that the impacts are equitable Of course the results are going to go first to to to people who have money and resources to use this technology But we need to make sure that we continue to think of the impact on the rest of the world And all of this information this data that we put into it. We need to manage that. This is I study information privacy and Even with a little bit of information you can learn a lot and with the AI translator translating everything You can you can learn everything about someone and so could your neighbors and the government So how do we make sure that people have autonomy over their their information that's collected and that it's it's secure So that that embedded device doesn't leak your All your conversations that you've ever had I think you bring up a really valuable point about autonomy Seeing AI was launched recently by Microsoft and I decided to take it for a test drive Literally, I was sitting in the passenger seat of the car sticking my phone to the window Taking pictures when we pulled up at stop lights going I never knew what was on that corner I just drove by it And I never stopped to think about it. I never You kind of Glance at it in your imagination, but it's never a real-world experience and suddenly what was going on in the streets around me outside of a car Went from something that I could only imagine to an actual experience that I could partake in and I had that autonomy to choose that But you run into situations, especially in my work with seniors where you see people being Made to feel like they have to use technology when they would rather use person-centered care They would rather have a volunteer or care personal care attendant or an Ira agent or something person with a human touch Now I'm never going to have the experience of getting into a car getting cut off by a truck in front of me and flipping the driver off If AI comes to fruition to the point where I can drive which it will because that's just my life goal um then I Will be able to get into a car, but it will be driving itself And probably at that point in society no cars will cut each other off because AI will be doing all of the Navigation driving and accidents will go down and people will be happy and there will be no such thing as road rage And that's history in progress Lives change people change things change Technology is leading that change and you're right. It's neither good nor evil, but it's definitely driven by Motive money gain knowledge greed Hope there's so many ways that you know technology can be applied in society that we have to keep the ethics front and center We have to keep the implications of technology at the forefront of our consciousness as we develop it because It's only as good as its creator and all of our biases and all of our filters are collected in this technology and used All right, thank you such a good discussion and I also Peter's reminding me We're running out of time and so before we wrap up and I think we would definitely want to hear from the panelists about their View of the future because I mean we not only want to know what's going on today But a very important how do we imagine tomorrow right the future? So I think I'd like to invite a panelist to share their view in terms of where do you see the greatest opportunities for AI? technology and accessibility Whoever want to volunteer to go for us is fine Yeah, from my point of view like if I were to put in my context of Ira, I Need AI to be in the edge devices like running a seeing AI in Smartphone because smartphones are powerful enough think back like around Six ten years back when the iPhone got released. It's not that powerful enough, but now we can run Seeing AI in your iPhones in your Samsung devices. They're like powerful, but all other Variable technologies also needs to be like more powerful for running AI at the edge That's one futuristic thing which I am expecting Thank you, Suji is and anybody I mean the rest of panelists also you have your tend to talk about your your view about a future I'll just say just a few words because I tend to be short. I think independence and equality Okay, are the most important things to strive for Tom sassy and Micah Yeah, sure I mean, I think there there are some great things on the horizon and I think self-driving cars are a perfect example I think you know, we're seeing incredible progress in some of the foundational technologies like computer vision And we're starting to see databases of data built up to the point where These algorithms can identify a huge number of objects in the world and can also understand Human language and help us communicate. So I think there's a bright future ahead of us Anybody who knows me knows Kind of one of the stories that led me into working in user experience and accessibility and it was tampons I Needed to go to the store and get tampons and when you go in and you say may I have a female assistant Help me and the female assistant tells you I'm busy. There's a guy over there. He'll help you And you're like, no, I need a female and they're like, no I'm busy and the guy turns out to be a teenage kid who's working a summer job and really bored And suddenly he has to help this blind lady go get tampons and I didn't know blind ladies You know needed stuff like that So he yells out to the entire store the brand of tampon that I want to type and where are they and he's yelling at His boss and his boss is yelling back and I'm like, okay Mordification now I can pull out One of four or five apps or devices walk into the store Quietly say to the device what I need hold it up to the store shelf pick up what I need and leave with no human Help so when you ask me what the future is you come already there Assistive technology and AI are already a daily part of my life and it's only going to increase I'm always going to be a disabled person comfortable in my own skin Because I have a piece of assistive technology in my hand helping me where my body cannot and that's just going to increase as AI evolves Go ahead And by saying it's it's hard to make predictions, especially about the future but there are again positive and negative forces I think on the The positive side there are so many ways that it can can help people now and the potential for Introducing this earlier and earlier in people's lives one of the the things that we've come to understand is how much Learning at early stages affects people's entire life course and how much that can be affected by by what we call disability and so where we have technologies that can affect Adapt to learning It will benefit everyone, but will particularly benefit people more equitably and on the on the Not so positive side. We need to manage the governance ethics security and privacy to to prevent others from Using this for their own purposes Thank you Mike any other comments All right, let's give our panelists a round of applause What I believe we have five minutes for questions, right? Do we have and if you have additional questions we can always you know ask the panelists or myself during the lunch break? And so I see Raise hand over there. I mean do we have Mike hand over? Yeah, there was one question over there This is Brian Charleston and I am the head of technology at the Carroll Center for the blind I've been teaching blind and visually impaired people to use technology for the past God help me 33 years so My question is and it's something that keeps literally keeps me up at night and that is the digital divide has not gone away My life is filled with technology, but it does not describe the lives of The 70% of people with disabilities who are unemployed and can't afford any of it and the programs That continue to fund virtually everything except services for older people So the question is Do you think AI is going to drive down the cost of accessibility? Do you think the system is ready to accept that? AI and things associated with access technology are just as important as The pharmacopia that we're fed on a daily basis Yes, I think that AI is stepping in for instruction Acquisition I think eventually we need to be looking at technology as medical I think how we do that falls under the governance of AI and technology as a whole and so it's a conversation and a policy change Will it happen immediately? No, but it's definitely a conversation It needs to be forefront in all of our minds and we need to be pushing for it as Brian said This is a huge gap in service We are the ones who have to step up and deal with it And I hate to put that burden on us But we've looked at the government for 70 plus years asking them to do it hasn't happened. We've got to do it Yeah, definitely AI is going to bring down a lot of these costs Even at AIRA we always encounter this question of like why the service is costly and We are working with government agencies on bringing on this cost But the same time there is a person sitting behind a computer and who is working Who is always people are costly So we are relying on AI technologies to bring down that cost by offloading some of the agent tasks so that it becomes more affordable and From business perspective also there are some initiatives that are happening to get this funded by organizations or By the government itself via insurance so that it becomes more affordable and Adding AI technology is also going to bring down the cost but I this is my card also add that as We Use AI to develop things that adapt to everyone and they become integrated into consumer technology You have less of the pathology of medicalized technology that is Orders of magnitude more expensive than perhaps it should be so having had experience with voice transcription systems and trying to obtain devices That were labeled as medical devices versus now they're built into the smartphones and the Marginal costs have dropped not just because the technology change but because it's been integrated and and labeled into something everybody has My name is Narayan Bhatia and I'm echoing further on this Seen cost to the seniors. So I will leave that person item there, but I'll pursue something else I live in a retirement community Where the average age is 86 and the median age is 89 at that age group people have multiple Disabilities they cannot see well. They cannot hear well. They cannot walk well Will the AI at least put a filter ahead of it saying can you hear well before they start using the screen reader? because the person cannot read well and So the disabled multiple disabilities in the senior set is an important issue along with the cost of how do you introduce any of the AI related Solutions to them. That's just my comment. Yeah More and more sensory input. That's the population that I specialize in training and working with and the answer is The more types of sensory feedback that we can give for output and input of information and the more that AI can customize and Use that information and get to know the person that it's working with The thing that we're seeing right now is You know iPhone technology is the thing that everybody wants to learn But it's becoming so complicated because they keep cramming features in and cramming features in So we keep coming back to them and saying give us the ability to filter features out Give us the ability to customize accessibility even more More more more customization is what's needed to make I AI be able to function with this population to a degree where it can help to bring down costs keep people at home and comfortable and autonomous and shift the care from a medicalized model to a social rehabilitation model where possible Yes, and I think I agree with you says the personalization is really the next frontier when it comes to accessibility It is not really one category is how can you personalize for individuals need? Any other comment? I just had one thing to add with respect to cost AI is software It isn't a physical product with the same level of intrinsic cost so Smartphones are becoming ubiquitous as was mentioned earlier. There are more people who have smartphones today than have a toilet and It'll be in large part up to the people who create these Intelligent systems to figure out what kind of pricing model works But the truth is a lot of access to Intelligent systems today is is free and I hope it continues to be for example Siri is free Google Assistant is free and I hope that many new technologies will be as well Yeah, I know there are more questions among audience So we do have to break for lunch and so I mean if you have questions as I said It will be there on the fifth floor and we'll continue to answer questions there So now let's give them another round of applause and we wrap up here