“Disabling Intelligences: Legacies of Eugenics and How We are Wrong about AI” by Rua M. Williams
This book discusses the influences of eugenics on the AI industry and the impacts of AI opportunism on disabled people. Why are the negative consequences of so-called AI so consistently directed at disabled and racialized people? Disabling Intelligences answers this question by detailing the ongoing effects of the eugenicist mindset on our corporate ventures and our interpersonal relationships. It offers an accessible guide to the various meanings, methods, and impacts of AI, and provides a clear framework for classifying, categorizing, evaluating, and critiquing AI projects. Bridging the gap between STS and critical disability studies, the author centers disabled experiences to present a novel framework that helps readers transform their understandings of citizenship, consumerism, social movements, journalism, engineering, research, and scholarship.
An ideal reading for academics at all levels interested in AI technologies across the social sciences and humanities, as well as engineering and computer science, this groundbreaking short monograph challenges our understanding and assumptions about technology, encompassing the history of AI and disability from popular culture to real-life case-studies. Readers will come away from this text equipped with a clarity of perception and a toolkit for evaluating and resisting metaeugenics in technology.
Review
This was a really good look at how we think we’re using AI and the ways that it plays into ideas of eugenics. It’s another example of a technological fix for things that require societal changes in how we view work and ability to work. There are many example of past technology fixes that have been thought up to solve problems related to disability that were subsequently abandoned leaving people behind. Will AI be another one of those things. We think we need AI to solve our problems but how many additional problems does AI create in the process of using it? I think the author does a great job providing examples of AI in media and what our assumptions have been regarding those portrayals.The author also breaks down the different types of AI usage and what we think they can be used for while showing the various issues that occur as a result. While this is an academic book I felt like it was relatively easy to read and get through quickly as I felt like the author was very good at explaining things in a way that many people can undrestand.
Book Details
- Author’s Website
- Rua M. Williams (BlueSky)
- Publisher / Date
- Palgrave Macmillan Cham, September 2025
- Genre / Topics
- Essays, Disability Studies, Artificial Intelligence
- Page Count
- 136
- Completion Date
- September 27, 2025