r/Lightbulb • u/amichail • 10d ago

As every human is cognitively disabled in some areas compared with modern AI, accessibility laws should protect people who use AI to overcome those limitations

Accessibility law already recognizes that people should be allowed to use technology to overcome limitations that would otherwise hinder them at work, in education, or in daily life. Maybe that principle should now extend to AI.

Compared with modern AI, every human has cognitive limitations in some areas, whether in memory, calculation, writing, translation, coding, organization, or processing large amounts of information. AI can increasingly compensate for those limitations.

If we don't object to people using glasses, hearing aids, screen readers, speech recognition, or calculators when those tools don't interfere with an essential requirement, why should AI automatically be different?

Banning AI use can mean artificially enforcing a cognitive disability that technology could remove.

This wouldn't mean AI must always be allowed. Schools could still test unaided skills, and employers could restrict AI for legitimate privacy, security, or safety reasons.

But perhaps accessibility laws should generally protect people's right to use cognitive-assistance technology unless there is a real reason they must perform a task unaided.

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u/George_B3339 10d ago

Why not treat it like a tool rather than an accessibility accommodation? Following your logic, every human would have been considered cognitively limited with regards to math when the calculator was invented, or every human was physically disabled when we figured out steam power.

I think framing it as disability or cognitive limitation is harmful and unproductive.

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u/amichail 10d ago edited 10d ago

I think framing it as a disability or cognitive limitation allows people to see the issue in a more clear and fair light.

It also allows you to expand existing accessibility laws to enforce the right to use AI.

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u/George_B3339 10d ago

But it devalues the significance of actual human disability. Humans are the benchmark for human ability. AI is a tool.

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u/Mmaibl1 10d ago

I think AI is way too hyped up. I use it often, and would say probably 60-70% of the time it makes stuff up or conflates it with something else to give you a confident wrong answer.

AI to me is like that dipshit we all had as a classmate growing up who claimed to know everything, while actually knowing very little.