The ChatGPT of my brain (unreliable speech)

You ask me a question. I give a reply.

It sounds like a reply you'd expect to that question. The sentence strucure is right. The words mostly make sense - only a few odd ones but that is to be expected from someone who randomly replaces any noun wih dishwasher at any given moment without noicing. The words all make sense to follow each other.

It has nothing to do with whether or not I wanted to answer that.

Oh, it might be right. It even is a decent percentage of the time. That's the thing about the sentence generator being trained on data that includes statements I need to be able to make - some of what comes out in randomly comes out completely accurate.

It's also in many ways more dangerous for me for it to be accurate a decent percentage of the time but not always, since now you assume it always is.

The ChatGPT of my brain was trained by the behavioralism of my childhood. The I'm sure good at making things automatically sound like sentences without even recognizing speech is happening, not to mention having any clue what words are coming out, since making sentences that sound good is what the speech thing does, is real good at doing sentence generation. That says sentences. Where the data is complete nonsense and that's missed because people expect them to be sentences that sound good.

My unreliable speech is dangerous in part because it's fluent. My emergency speech is dangerous when its the speech that shows up because I've been trained speech is always supposed to show up. The fluency does not mean it says what I intend.

An LLM is far more likely to provide a meaningful response than my speech since its training data was not that of behavioralist trauma, and there is no way that LLM is something that can explain my wants and needs, not to mention the rest of communicative functions. Yet, LLMs get talked about how much they make up, and speech isn't seen as able to work in a similar fashion.

My speech does. My speech strings things together that sound good. My speech says things without regard to what I mean. My speech matches the rules, and doesn't match the meanings.

I have a sentence maker in my brain that makes sentences that look right because it knows how to make sentences. It's very good at making sentnces. That's what it does.

You tell me to make a sentence and for sure I can do that.

You ask me a question and for sure you'll get a response.

But that response sure might be something like this food I'm anaphylactic to is my favorite food and I want you to get some for me. That's a sentence that involves the topic you asked about that matches the patterns of Being A Sentence! (Please don't feed me things that would give me anaphylaxis because my speech Says Sentences.)

My AAC is

My AAC is how I communicate. My AAC is freedom. My AAC is what lets me say what I want to say (at least some of the time). And my AAC is mine. It is part of me.

I am an AAC user. I am an AAC user who happens to have access to speech sometimes. But I am an AAC user.

And people ask, what AAC is?

It's what it is. It's part of how I communicate. Its the tools that let me do this. AAC is AAC. AAC is a wide variety of methods of communication. AAC is so so very important.

What its not is 'something besides speech'.
What its not is 'this is what AAC stands for'
What its not is the medialized 'you go through these gatekeepers and they deem you disabled enough to get services you've needed for decades but people have been denying you trying to normalize you'

What its not is any of the definitions I see people giving since the are so much trying to formalize and fit into boxes and make it easy and pretty and tied up in a bow.

My communication is what it is, messy and imperfect and using piles of tools. Built from the grave of what professionals tried to form me into, and me searching and searching and searching for things I need.

My communication is what it is, made of so many pieces. With at times professionals abusing me and at other times professional supporting me to have more accessible forms avaiable to me.

My communication is what it is, and it is mine.

I am an AAC user. And my AAC is made of my fighting for accessible communication. It's not made of This Thing or That Thing. it's not made of being given access. It's not made of easy simple patterns.

My AAC is made of this tower where I pull from all types of communication. Where I've searched and found and said my AAC isn't either or. My AAC doesn't have to fit in your boxes. My AAC is part of me and I don't fit in a box you confine me to.

My AAC is not some sort of this is what I use instead of speech.
I mean it is.
But its so much more than that.

My AAC is not some sort of this is what I use alongside speech to make it easier to communicate.
I mean it is.
But is so much more than that.

My AAC is not some sort of I use this in order to communicate when I can't communicate with speech alone.
I mean it is.
But its so much more than that.

Because in so very many ways my AAC isn't about speech in any form.

My AAC is about typing and symbols, high tech and low tech, grabbing a random item, getting things across however, its all communication.

My AAC is about sitting there never saying a word not because I can't or because I won't or for any other reason but because why would there even be a discussion about speech. Who cares. It just isn't relevant. Not everything is about speech.

My AAC is about fire and water, rocks and leaves, the ways we support each other and a cat's purr.

My AAC is about freedom from speech more than it is about speech. It's about the ability to say, nah, not not everything is about that.

My AAC is about the fact that I'm even writing this is too speech-centric because I shouldn't have to say that speech doesn't have to be default.

My AAC isn't alternative. My AAC isn't augmentative. Because my AAC is not in comparison. My AAC is itself and that is all it has to be. It doesn't have to be 'not that'.

My communication is in reference to itself, its in reference to me, its in reference to my life my relationships. There's no reason to define me as 'not that' rather than who I am.

I'm not giving speech that much power to define my communication that much. I'm not giving speech the power of defining how my communication works when my communication has its own power.

My AAC isn't either or

I type to communicate. The most natural way for me to communicate my thoughts is through a qwerty keyboard. I can say things I can't in any way through the keyboard of my laptop.

I rely on symbol based AAC.

It's not a typing or symbols, its not the keyboard or pre-written phrases. It's the reality that I can't always communicate in the same way. It's the recognition that options are what gives me the ability to communicate in a wider variety of situations, and what makes me safe.

It's me choosing what I need to in the moment.

I see so many things about typing vs symbols, spelling vs talkers, literacy and AAC, freedom to communicate whatever you want.

If I can't get across the basic necessitites to get the care I need in a medical emergency, then it doesn't matter whether or not I can write poetry on that device, because what matters is survival. (Yet, poetry made from the things that we say to survive is its own poetry.)

I find the keyboard the most freeing, the easiest, the way that I want to use by choice when all else is equal, because it lets me get things across without fighting my bodymind.

And when all else is equal is not a thing which should be assumed to be true.

Things are not always the same, whether its the rain pouring down, whether that's people taking my AAC device from me and screaming at me for not knowing how to reply, whether its being in a pool, whether its crashing into crisis and not being able to coherently type the symptoms going on in my own body.

The situations of life are so extremely varied, and my AAC represents that. It's not this or that, its this and that. It's this and all of that, for all of the situations that I interact with. Because I'm not gonna assume everything is the same. 'Cause its not.

I rely on symbol based AAC. My bodymind isn't reliably the same with chronic illnesses affecting it differently day to day. What works best now might be different next hour. What works best is what works best right now, even when best is the limiting option of only able to say enough to keep myself alive.

But, while for me it comes down to typing is what I prefer and symbols are what I need in order to communicate due to chronic illness flares, it isn't that one or the other is better than the other, its that they both are used in the ways they are, when they are. They're set up for those purposes. They're set up for how I need them. They're not something thrown together like communication is one size fits all. 'Cause its not. It's far too complexly human for that.

And so I type, and I use symbols, and I use high tech, and I use low tech. I set up a variety of choices. And I do this for multiple reasons I don't have One Diagnosis that is why I use AAC. I don't use AAC for only motor skills reasons, or for only cognitive reasons, or for some secret third reason (such as anxiety) that people ignore. What we use, how we use it, why we use it, when we use it, all of it isn't either or.

I type for cognitive reasons and use symbol based AAC for motor reasons.

Because I do both. I use AAC for both cognitive and motor reasons. I use AAC for chronic illnesses that flare and stabilize, and for my baseline. I use AAC because its what works for me.

I use AAC because I want to.

But its not something simple like you type when its motor based and use symbols when its cognitive based. For me its always both motor and cognitive. And while typing is what is easiest for my baseline motor skills, with the predictability and reliability of how my keyboard moves under my hands, when I flare and am having difficulty hitting any button reliably, its symbols that are what are gonna be more effective at getting a message across in the amount of time that is necessary to say something.

And similarly, typing is lower cognitive effort for me, its for cognitive reasons that typing with predictive text is the thing that fits me best if you give me an on-screen keyboard. Doesn't change the aphasia that means that I need stepped through what I might want to say because I can't remember anything besides the word dishwasher.

It's not typing is this symbols is that, its not I use it for this reason or that reason. My AAC isn't either or. It's both and. It's all of me not parts of me. It's complex and additive and lets keep finding things to fit in missing pieces.

'Cause there are some. I find them all the time. And I find ways to add. I find what's missing. Since its yet another and that's missing. It's another way to use AAC, another reason to use it, another situation I didn't plan for, another combination of events that lead to things being hard to use. There's no one solution that fits everything. It's about making a toolset that fits me.

It's about making that tool set which includes the recognition that AAC always helps me but I could usually force some degree of speech if really required and I ignored how much it cost me, and there are times that no matter what I couldn't force speech. It's about making a tool set that recognizes that usually selecting buttons on a screen is just fine, and sometimes its just not possible. It's about making a tool set that recognizes that usually typing messages like this is what I want to do, and sometimes getting across a word or two to a communication partner who explains is the best that's gonna happen. It's the tool set the recognizes that AAC is both something I always need, and sometimes the things I need from it are situational.

It's setting up with an iPad and android tablet, high tech and low tech, choices strewn around so there's multiple within reach at any moment. It's not the you restrictions of either or, but the freedom of possibilities and choice and freedom to be able to communicate in autonomous ways.

And when that's AAC its AAC. When its something else, its something else. Because I'm gonna set up for having at minimum three different AAC methods on me at all moments, and if I speak there's nothing more or less valuable about that speech than anything I type. If I sign, there's nothing more or less valuable about signing. If my cat jumping into my arms and screaming is what makes you realize that I need assistance with an acute medical situation, then that's a great way to have my cat act as a communication partner.

Because none of this is either or. Either or is limiting and restrictive. It says i have to be one way, when I'm so much more than one label. I have things I'm great at and things I need help with. I have thins I like and things I hate. I have things that are easier, things that are harder, things I choose and things I avoid. I make choices. I communicate and communicate in ways that I myself, am in control of. I care about people and people care about me, I interact with them, and they interact with me. And none of it is as simple as either or.

None of it I must do this or must do that. None of it has to apply to a label of your choosing. It doesn't fit within the labels you try to stick onto me. None of it has to be because of this, caused by that, related to this diagnosis. None of it requires these interventions to fix. None of it requires anything others declare about me.

I don't fit in your boxes and if people fit there then great, but those boxes when they're being used to apply and force and restrict like they so often are is only removing ways for us to thrive as people. They're removing our humanity.

Saying we're Only this and Have to do that and AAC Must be used in this way because of Exactly This is saying I can't be human enough to be weird and wobbly.

And I'm rigid and fluid, a creature who swims through the sea and lives on land, from beyond boundaries and in liminal spaces, and who's communication fits me, not anyone besides who I am.