Author Archives: Rua Williams

Rua M. Williams is an Assistant Professor in the User Experience Design program at Purdue Univeristy. They study interactions between technology design, computing research practices, and Disability Justice. Common approaches to technology and service design for marginalized people tend to naturalize existing inequities, exacerbating injustice even while they attempt to ameliorate it. Dr. Williams deploys Feminist and Anti-Racist approaches to Technoscience, Critical disability Studies, and Science and Technology Studies in the design and evaluation of technological systems to simultaneously illustrate injustice in technology as well as marginalized users’ own practices of resistance through those same technologies.
rmwilliams@purdue.edu | Assemblage Profile
A glowing orb of energy floating in mid-air. The inside is like a giant star-gate with portals to other worlds and dimensions.

LaMDA and the Limits of Sentience

Chorong Park, Rua Williams October 24, 2022

In early June, Blake Lemoine, then an engineer at Google, claimed that LaMDA, a Machine Learning-based chatbot, was sentient and needed to be treated with respect. LaMDA stands for Language Model for Dialog Applications. AI chatbots are designed to interpret user-entered text, analyze key phrases and syntax with Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) models, and generate responses and actions that feel believable as a conversational partner . After multiple conversations with LaMDA, Lemoine concluded that LaMDA was psychologically like a child of 7 or 8 years old . Google accused Blake Lemoine of “persistently violating clear employment and data security policies” and fired him .  (read more...)

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graphic representation of various disability dongles. Top Left stair climbing wheelchair. Top right "social emotion recognition" AR goggles. Bottom Left Sign language gloves. Bottom Right haptic shoes interfering with blind person's navigation.

Disability Dongle

Liz Jackson, Alex Haagaard, Rua Williams April 19, 2022
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I created the term “Disability Dongle” in 2019 to draw attention to the phenomenon of design and engineering students and practitioners who prototype “innovative” disability solutions. The definition satirizes an outcome in which designs or technologies “for” disabled people garner mainstream attention and accolades despite valid concerns disabled people have about them.  (read more...)

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