
Personalized deep learning equips robots for autism therapy - rbanffy
http://news.mit.edu/2018/personalized-deep-learning-equips-robots-autism-therapy-0627
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guard0g
Rosalind Picard was the inspiration for my kid's Intel Science Fair project:
"Constructing an Anthropomophic Robotic Agent for Emotion Recognition and
Generation"

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extralego
Any links? This is very intriguing. I would love any elaboration if not. Also,
congrats.

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sjg007
The whole point of autism therapy is to get to a human connection and social
interaction. Robots seem like iPads or video chat at best... I guess this is
more about AI that can detect engagement...

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robotresearcher
> Robots seem like iPads or video chat at best

No they don't. Being physically animated makes a difference in how robots feel
to be around. Aspects of their movement, sound and appearance are interpreted
as affect. Researchers are able to roughly manipulate the type and amount of
affect and other social cues displayed by robots, which is what makes them
useful for research and therapy with autistic children.

This isn't my area, but it's a well-established niche in robotics research.

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sjg007
Can you provide any references? These claims seem extraordinary.

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robotresearcher
Maja Mataric and Aude Billard are key professors in this area. Google finds
them.

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extralego
Honestly, I would strongly encourage an optional _replacement_ for therapists
altogether. Nearly no humans of the type we raise in the US are cut out for
jobs which require compassion.

Of course, many (mental health workers) are amazing, even seemingly super-
human, some of them. No question about that.

But, actively caring for and defending such a marginalized and misunderstood
population are _never_ congruent with an astute professional career path in a
capitalist society. I am from the US, and this may be different in other
countries.

In US social mental health programs, we have been implementing scorched earth
policing policies and enforcing them _in the mental health clinics._ One
frightening issue at the moment involves state policies that give mental
health facilities quotas for drug testing their patients. This is effectively
leveraging mental health needs to criminalize and deny services. It’s most
common in Republican states but rampant everywhere. Professional mental health
workers are by and large non-critical and uninspired to take action.

So how does this effect autistic patients? In the same way that autism leads
to issues with hiring processes and, confrontations with law enforcement,
housing, etc. Autism falls victim to prejudice of mental health professionals
according to a bias at the level of communication.

The policies are of course described as safety measures. Despite their
likelyhood of encouraging suicide, the rapid rise in the US suicide rate +
opioid crisis is currently being leveraged as the justification for such
policies. Nevermind that opioids are not used in mental health treatments and
that both issues are geographically strongly correlated with trends in
economic displacement. Nothing new under the sun.

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neom
Agree. Differences in information input and processing of a human should not
be tied to capabilities of a human, and humans are awful at assessing humans
and assisting development . Although incredibly expensive I suppose, I'd also
advocate for early stage fmri as an assessment tool:
[https://youtu.be/rdEX67wAuMk?t=12m29s](https://youtu.be/rdEX67wAuMk?t=12m29s)

