Disabled in Computing

Welcome! 👋🏻 This is Disabled in Computing, a meeting zone for all disabled, neurodivergent, and/or chronically ill folks in computing. We're here to amplify those in computing research and practice, support each other, and break through the isolation of disability in computing.

Huge congratulations, Prof. Barto and Prof. @RichardSSutton! Well deserved!!!

In Spring 2011, after @gonendh got an offer from @UMassAmherst, I came as a prospective PhD student to visit @ManningCICS (then a dept). Andy Barto was dept chair. He met with me 1:1, chatted and shared tales of Leverett's (then) shitty internet service. 1/

Happy Monday! Check out this new @SIGCHI paper from @peyajm29 and colleagues on making web code more accessible using AI dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/37…

Don’t miss TODAY 12pm #DisabledInComputing meetup @ #SDM2025! Open to disabled, chronically ill, neurodivergent, and/or mentally ill folks; Allies welcome! @fabriciomurai hosts! Meet us at the hotel lobby, we head at 12:05 to Panera at 350 Dulany St @DisabledInCS @SIAMDataMining

Don’t miss tomorrow's @DisabledInCS #DisabledInComputing meetup at #SDM25! Open to disabled, chronically ill, neurodivergent, and/or mentally ill folks; Allies welcome! RSVP forms.gle/o4NGkgxS1zc1ei… @fabriciomurai hosts! Friday, May 2, 12-1:20pm ET @ Panera Bread @ 350 Dulany St

I read a 💔 story today about the creator of Strawberry Shortcake/the Care Bears, Muriel Juneberry Fahrion, who gets 0 royalties from the endless products made from her IP, all bc in the 70s she was work for hire 🥺 She lives on Social Security and her independent online store.

nearly 3 years later, this is still nowhere near solved.

For all these reasons and more, I was delighted to hear that Andrew Barto & @RichardSSutton are received this year's Turing award, the highest honor in our field. Calling it "incredibly well-deserved" does not even begin to do it justice. Huge congratulations, Andy & Richard! 5/5

In 2017, as a freshly-minted PhD, I had the deep honor and privilege of representing @ACMSIGIR at the Turing 50th celebration, where I had the unique joy of meeting many of the awardees and having fascinating conversations with Barbara Liskov and @MartinHellman2. 4/

More recently I had the pleasure of seeing Andy again at Jim Kurose's retirement party. By then, his and @RichardSSutton's foundational work on reinforcement learning were widely recognized to be the key to the deep learning systems underlying effectively all contemporary AI. 3/

I didn't know back then about his many storied research accomplishments, which were already impressive long before deep learning was cool; I just knew he was the nicest department chair I had ever met (@jallan_umass, soon to be my PhD advisor, did not become chair until 2015). 2/

Check out this cool new paper from our founders, @ShirKi, @fabriciomurai & friends criticizing "AGI". For our #disabled folks, we note the "Normalized Exclusion" trap and the recommendation for inclusivity (now a "bad word" according to the current administration #smh)

I loved how much this team stepped up when I lost the ability to manage this project due to pregnancy and later childcare. It was really inspiring to see this come together

A group of us came together to challenge the dominant narrative of AI research - paper out today. We posit that “AGI” is as nebulous to define as its supposed benefits, and we argue that principled scientific, engineering and societal needs should drive AI research instead. 👇

Greater specificity, pluralism, and inclusion in AI research are more important than pursuing AGI, especially if the goal is to improve people's lives. In this paper, we describe "traps" associated with the pursuit of AGI that can impede achieving this and other worthwhile goals.

Read the paper here: bit.ly/StopTreatingAGI

The paper is joint work with @CGraziul, @struthious, Hananel Hazan, @L_badikho, @evijitghosh, @Katherine Heller, @undersequoias , @fabriciomurai, @ErykSalvaggio, @andrewthesmart, Todd Snider, Mariame Tighanimine, @TaliaRinger, @mmitchell_ai and @ShirKi.

I’m thrilled to share new work arguing that the research community should stop treating AGI as a North-Star goal! Debates about AGI miss the forest for the trees.🧵

JOB: Postdocs. @DisabledStem @StemDisabled @BlkDisHigherEd @TheMindHears @DisInHigherEd @DisabledInCS

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