Hey readers, It's the last Friday of the month! How are you doing? This week, Future Perfect's Sigal Samuel was featured on WNYC's The Brian Lehrer Show — hope you give it a listen.
As always, don't be a stranger: Tell us what's on your mind. Email futureperfect@vox.com with your feedback, suggestions, and burning questions.
—Kelsey Piper, senior writer |
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Coaching first responders to better help autistic people |
Dan Addison/UVA University Communications |
An estimated one in five people with autism spectrum disorder, ASD, will be stopped and questioned by police before they're 21. This is especially concerning given that people with disabilities, including those with autism, are more likely to be injured or killed during interactions with police. Yet, while first responders have protocols for medical emergencies or acts of violence, they lack a cohesive set of strategies for how to handle 911 calls involving autistic people who are in crisis or who have run away from home or school, said Rose Nevill, the director of the University of Virginia's Autism Research Core. That's why Nevill and her team developed the Supporting Transformative Autism Research (STAR) initiative, which teaches medical first responders in Virginia how to engage with autistic people when responding to 911 calls. Nevill aims to expand the training to law enforcement and fire rescue responders. "When someone's having a behavioral outburst at home, 911 ends up being the last resort, and when they're called, oftentimes, they're taken to the emergency room," she said. "Which isn't necessarily the best setting for someone on the spectrum because they don't have autism knowledge in a typical ER, so they end up getting medicated, or facing a really long hospitalization." The initiative's protocol has six key recommendations: keep sensory needs in mind (turn off lights or sirens when approaching the scene), identify one responder to lead the interaction, and communicate clearly. First responders should also pinpoint the autistic person's interests in order to find them or deescalate the situation, and identify an advocate who understands the person's needs best. Crucially, first responders should loop back with 911 dispatchers and their agency to ensure the next time that person needs emergency services, the response is more tailored. I spoke with Nevill about what led her to develop this program and about what's next for the training. —Rachel DuRose, Future Perfect fellow
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. How long does the training last, and what do you include? We wanted to know what the community thinks should be in the training, what first responders think should be in the training, and how we can design the training so that it's sustained within agencies. What we did was conduct focus groups and surveys with autistic adults, caregivers of people with autism, and then first responders to ask them: "What were your experiences like during a 911 call?" What was really cool was we found that all of the groups really had a lot of consistency with what they wanted to see. A lot of the training [we created] is about how to recognize autism, how to understand the diversity within autism, and how to de-escalate someone in crisis using these strategies. We also talk a lot about why someone with autism may require 911 support and what the really common reasons are. Another big chunk of our training is our practice activities, and a little bit of roleplay, and in the next iteration, we're going to be making the role pay a lot more a bigger part of that. |
"[A] lot of first responders really want to help, and they want to know the best ways to help the community." |
Why is it so important for first responders in particular to get this training? People with autism across their lifespan are a lot more likely to have an interaction with a first responder than what we call the neurotypical population. A really big contributor to that is the tendency to run away. That's actually a really big danger, particularly for children. There was a study that came out a few years ago that looked at the leading preventable causes of death among people with autism, and one of the leading preventable causes of death is drowning. We know for some reason that a lot of children on the spectrum are drawn toward bodies of water, but due to learning difficulties, many don't have lifesaving swim skills or water safety skills. What was also interesting about running away is that a lot of research has shown it's not necessarily that they're running away from something, but they're trying to access something, like water. Another big reason is when someone enters a behavioral or sensory meltdown. People with autism tend to experience the sensory world differently than someone who's neurotypical. They're more sensitive to certain sensory aspects of the world, so when you have a lot of sensory input all at once, it can become very overwhelming and they may actually have a meltdown, go into a panic, and then lash out behaviorally. Or someone may lash out behaviorally for another reason. We know that difficulties with communication, which is inherent to an autism diagnosis, can also make someone more at risk of having a communication breakdown which can cause anxiety and stress and potentially painful, difficult, challenging behavior. Typically, in those situations, maybe a caregiver ends up calling because they need help de-escalating the person. Is there anything you'd like to add?
I'd encourage anyone in the community who is directly affected by autism, who is concerned about 911 calls, to just go introduce themselves to their local emergency response agencies. They are oftentimes very welcoming to people stopping by, and the reason I suggest that is because just exposure of someone on the spectrum to a fire truck, or someone in a scary uniform, can be really helpful. It also can be helpful to the responders to meet someone with autism and see what that looks like because a lot of first responders really want to help, and they want to know the best ways to help the community. The more we can do to help disseminate that knowledge and that exposure to responders, the better. |
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How fake AI images can expand your mind |
Photo illustration by Dion Lee/Vox; pope image generated by Reddit user "u/trippy_art_special" on Midjourney; background generated by Midjourney. |
Beyond duping a good number of people online, the viral, AI-generated image of Pope Francis in a trendy puffer can tell us something about how we think about imagination. It's one thing to read a description of a futuristic city with inspiring architecture, public transportation woven through greenery, and spaces designed for human interaction, not cars. It's another to see a spread of photorealistic images of what that could look like. Future Perfect fellow Oshan Jarow argues how AI will greatly increase the raw material of plausible worlds the mind can imagine inhabiting and, through them, the kinds of futures we perceive as possible.
"Hannah Ritchie recently wrote about 'changeable optimism,' or the belief that coordinated efforts can manifest significantly better worlds," says Jarow. "That can seem difficult when we struggle to imagine what better worlds might actually look like. Image-generating AI, if we navigate the risks, can help us believe never-before-seen worlds are possible."
More on this topic from Vox: |
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AI leaders (and Elon Musk) urge all labs to press pause on powerful AI |
Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images |
Some of the biggest names in AI are raising the alarm about their own creations. In an open letter published Tuesday, more than 1,100 signatories called for a moratorium on state-of-the-art AI development. There's an understandable impulse here to eye-roll. But the letter is right to argue that there's still a lot we can do, writes senior reporter Sigal Samuel.
"This letter, like everything, is imperfect," Samuel said. Some of the phrases in it risk misleading people into thinking of AI as sentient; I wouldn't have used words like 'loyalty' or 'digital minds,' for example. But I think the spirit of the letter — slow down until we can put in place more regulation, evaluation, and accountability — is absolutely on point." More on this topic from Vox: |
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| Frank Hormann/picture alliance via Getty Images |
Italy's far-right government wants to ban cellular meat to "protect its food heritage." Political economist Jan Dutkiewicz had my favorite take: the livestock sector's attempts to quash slaughter-free meat are exactly parallel to the fossil fuel industry's attempts to use regulatory capture to obstruct clean energy. This is, as he put it, "the next big political story in food," and of course Giorgia Meloni's Italy is the first to try to go through with it. —Marina Bolotnikova, staff editor Influenza D is really good at infecting cows, and it turns out it's been spilling over to people who work closely with them, NPR reports. In a study published late last year, researchers found that two-thirds of dairy workers (in a tiny sample size of just 31) had been exposed to it. The virus isn't doing much damage to cows, let alone the people who work with them, and so the USDA isn't surveilling it. But one of the study authors, Jessica Liebler, an environmental epidemiologist, told NPR we need to get on it: "It only took a huge global pandemic to realize that viruses can change really quickly, and you don't know when they're going to change." —Kenny Torrella, staff writer If you, like me, are a fan of watching Keanu Reeves mumble monosyllabically in very nice suits while finding ever-more-creative ways to gun down his enemies, you're probably catching John Wick 4 this weekend. As this excellent piece from the Ringer explains, the Wick franchise is a continuation of the legacy of Hong Kong action cinema, a legacy also tapped by Best Picture-winner Everything Everywhere All at Once. But even as Hong Kong's film history continues to influence Hollywood, cultural crackdowns from Beijing have sapped the city's cinematic industry, blocking the efforts of new talent to make their mark. —Bryan Walsh, editor Might I provide a recipe recommendation? I'm in the midst of a farro renaissance — try out this refreshing spring salad from Charlie Bird. For the vegans, skip the cheese. Thank me later. —Izzie Ramirez, deputy editor Questions? Comments? Tell us what you think! We recently changed the format of this newsletter and would love to know your thoughts. Email us at futureperfect@vox.com. And if you want to recommend this newsletter to your friends or colleagues, tell them to sign up at vox.com/future-perfect-newsletter. |
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