November 9, 2021 • 38 mins
From gamification to AI, speech recognition to virtual reality, technology is making an extraordinary contribution to the lives of those living with disability – and there’s some pretty amazing stuff in store for the future too.
Power up with Alistair McEwan and Rae Johnston as they explore how technology, data and innovation are changing lives and improving outcomes, and the questions these cuttingedge creations are raising along the way. How do we best navigate the ethics of AI and make the most of its potential? Could a virtual baby give us new insight and a window to the future? And might soft exoskeletons (think Big Hero 6) become a tool in early intervention?
Professor Alistair McEwan is the Ainsworth Chair of Technology and Innovation at CPA. His research looks at how emerging technology – from bionics and robotics to AI – can contribute to better treatments, interventions and solutions for people living with cerebral palsy and similar conditions. Learn about Alistair’s work cerebralpalsy.org.au/our-research/
A multi-award-winning STEM journalist, broadcaster and proud Wiradjuri woman, Rae Johnston has worked in television, radio, podcasting and digital publishing. She was the first Science and Technology Editor for SBS’s NITV and is the producer and host of top-rated podcasts Queens of the Drone Age and Hear+Beyond.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ben McAlary (00:01):
We'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of
the land on which we're recording in Australia. We also
acknowledge the traditional custodians of the various lands on which
you're listening to us today, and we'd like to pay
our respects to elders past and present.
Andy McLean (00:28):
Hello and welcome to cerebral conversations. I'm Andy McLean.
Ben McAlary (00:34):
and I'm Ben McAlary. Hello. This episode is one for
the science and technology geeks and freaks like me. No, and really, anyone
who's curious about the meaning of life and the future
of humanity, sounds pretty intense, Andy.
Andy McLean (00:53):
Yeah, it does sound deep, but I tell you what,
our guests make it really entertaining. We've got multi award
winning STEM journalist and broadcaster Ray Johnston talking with engineering
technology expert Professor Alistair McEwan.
Ben McAlary (01:08):
Yeah, this conversation will get you thinking about a lot
of things, including how A.I., virtual reality, robotics and a
bunch of other tech could be game changers for people
living with cerebral palsy.
Andy McLean (01:23):
This is really the episode where we peer into the
crystal ball to ask what the future holds. And you
know what? There's quite a few reasons to be optimistic,
I reckon. So let's hear what our two technology gurus
have to say.
Rae Johnston (01:45):
So, Alistair, I'd like to start by why you came
to work for the Cerebral Palsy Alliance in the first place.
Alistair McEwan (01:53):
Oh, it's an interesting story. I'm an electrical engineer, so
it's a strange background to come into this area and
I was working on this obscure radio standard. I didn't
think it was going to go anywhere. It's named after
a Viking called Bluetooth, and I thought no one is
ever going to use this technology. So
Rae Johnston (02:14):
I think I may have heard of Bluetooth, but I think I
might be using it right now. So that was your PhD? That's incredible.
Alistair McEwan (02:20):
in that area. Yeah. At that time, my my my
first son was born and he had some challenges around
getting enough nutrition at new birth. And I found out
about this whole area where engineers can help out with
newborn babies who are struggling due to different problems and
cerebral palsy is really, you know, it's the culmination of
(02:42):
a lot of those problems. I think I find it
a really interesting area on that side of things.
Rae Johnston (02:48):
When I think cerebral palsy, I don't naturally think this
is something that engineers can help with. How does that work?
What do engineers bring to the table?
Alistair McEwan (02:56):
Honestly, most engineers run away when they hear about babies
who are sick. It's very difficult. You know, it is
a male dominated area, engineering, unfortunately, but biomedical engineering is
it's becoming more balanced, which is great. What we can
do is is really think about how to make the
technology for for the clinicians that look after the babies
(03:21):
and how really importantly, to to pick up the best data.
We hear a lot about our data being used by
big companies and little babies who are being heavily monitored
in a neonatal intensive care unit. Nadia Badawi in a
previous episode, she mentioned this that there's all this data
coming out of these monitors. You know, we we really
(03:44):
need to take advantage of what that's telling us and
help build models to predict which way those babies are
going to go if we treat them in different ways.
Rae Johnston (03:54):
So you're taking that data. What are you building with
that data? Are you building artificial intelligence systems? What's what's
happening with it?
Alistair McEwan (04:01):
Yeah, our aim is to build artificial intelligence that has
doctors in the loop. So it's to help clinicians make
decisions about what, what treatment to do to do, because
at the moment, they'll they'll look at that data. They'll
maybe look one day in the past, but it's difficult
to get a really long picture of what's going on
(04:23):
over a long period of time. So it's really about
giving them kind of that data visualisation. One of our
kind of futuristic projects is to develop like a virtual
baby that will be able to see how they develop
over time into the future and then simulate how changes
might change that development. So we could see, you know,
(04:44):
if if, if, say, a brain injury which could lead
to cerebral palsy would be, you know, the effect would
be lessened or in different ways.
Rae Johnston (04:52):
So that's incredible. And I can imagine that having applications
for your every baby really being able to be given,
essentially that's you're talking about having an instruction manual for newborns.
That's what every parent would want, right?
Alistair McEwan (05:07):
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, at the moment
there are parents with the children in neo natal intensive care, unfortunately.
And you know, if there's a pandemic going on, they
they it's challenging for them to go and visit. I
can just imagine we can create systems where maybe the
parents can have virtual reality goggles and you know, they'd
(05:29):
be saying, you know, how the baby is or even
during pregnancy. You know, I was always fascinated about what
was going on day to day, week to week. You know,
you could really, you know, give people a really like
an insight and create a stronger connection to the mothers
and fathers and all the family. So that's my origin story, Rae?
(05:50):
I'd be interested in hearing how you got involved in
working in STEM.
Rae Johnston (05:57):
I've got a little bit of a convoluted path into STEM, actually.
I was always one of those kids that loved science
and loved reading. I was I was always a bit
of a geek g rowing up, I wear that badge quite proudly,
and I actually started off wanting to be an actor.
And I was doing a whole bunch of, you know,
(06:17):
commercials and theatre and all of those sorts of things.
It was it was something that I was really pushed
to do by myself after I had my son quite young.
I had my son when I was 18 and and
I had a whole bunch of people around me tell
me that that was it for me now. You know,
you can't follow your dreams. And I went, well, no,
(06:38):
that's not how it works, because if I'm going to
show him, if I'm going to turn around and say
to him, you can be anything you want to be,
I have to follow my dreams. And I never thought
that there would be something that would combine science and performing.
But it turns out science communication fits that bill quite nicely.
And I went from acting into presenting, and one of
(07:01):
my first gigs was for a show reviewing video games.
And I just broadened my skillset. From there, I went
from covering just gaming to broader technology to everything that
exists on the internet into science as well. And I
became particularly passionate about the science that we're doing here
(07:21):
in Australia, that it's, you know, I'm a Wiradjuri woman,
I'm Aboriginal woman. And you know, this country, this continent
is something that is really important to me. So to
be able to see the work that's being done in
the realms of conservation and also bringing technology into that
was just a beautiful intersection of my interests. So I
(07:43):
am particularly fascinated by advances in technology that help make
our lives better. But I would love to hear from
you now. We've heard in other episodes the importance of
early intervention in cerebral palsy, and I'd like to know
from you what role you believe technology plays in this
(08:03):
space and the advancements over recent years. And also what
can we expect in the future? But we'll start with
what role it's playing now, what's happening right now?
Alistair McEwan (08:15):
There are lots of programs and studies about the effect
of early intervention, and it's really been shown to make
a huge difference. We know that it makes a big
difference in, you know, brain injury when it happens to
an adult. So it makes a lot of sense. It
would it would make a big difference in babies as
they develop and they also and children and of course,
(08:36):
children have the benefit that they have that they're still developing.
Their brain is still changing, it's wiring itself, making those connections.
And you mentioned gaming. I think gaming is a big
opportunity that we really want to take advantage of. So
we're thinking about how we can build on some of
the research that we're doing and include gamification of the
(08:58):
therapies that babies sometimes need to do or parents need
to do with with their children. People, obviously, you know,
they have large families, many kids, and they might have
a child with a disability and they feel that they
want to spend as much time as they can. And
we think we can, w e can support that with technology,
you know, as simple as something as a computer game,
(09:20):
even a way of controlling whether a video is playing
or not, you know, by doing that exercise that you
need to do with your muscle. Another one, a big one,
is communication. Nearly half the people with cerebral palsy have
communication difficulties because it's a physical disability, so it can
(09:40):
affect your voice as well the muscles you used to speak. Many,
many people will use different, different technology to communicate, such
as eye gaze , you know, those systems are they're not
like using, you know, a nice Apple mobile phone or
something like that. They're quite clunky. Then they're not designed
(10:02):
for a huge group. So making them more fun to use,
I think is a really key thing. And to point
to something else that Nadia mentioned, we know that that
some people, even with a high IQ, they have a
slower communication speed. So they're they're not able to communicate
at the rate maybe that we're communicating right now and
(10:24):
we want to use technology to to give them that
faster communication channel, maybe through a Bluetooth connection as well.
Rae Johnston (10:32):
Maybe maybe that's I'm always really interested in how eye
gaze technology is being used, that I've been familiar with
it being used in gaming for quite a few years now.
And yet there's even specific charities set up, like special
effect in the UK that t hey build these gaming systems
for people who use eye gaze to play and the benefits
(10:53):
that they can get from it, from social interaction to
problem solving skills, even just escapism is enormous. But we
do hear a lot of negativity around games and gaming.
There's a lot of concerns that parents might have putting
their children in front of these systems, even in a
therapeutic kind of way. What are your thoughts on this
(11:16):
and how would you alleviate some of those fears around,
you know, the terrors of gamification?
Alistair McEwan (11:22):
I think that the pandemic we're having has really taught
us a lot about how we should think about this.
I mean, it is a that is a question that a
ll of our community needs to talk about if you
as an engineer, if if I speak, you know, I'll
be very biased to to take the benefits of technology.
But I have, you know, I have two two children
(11:43):
who are home schooling and spending a lot of time
behind the screen. And I can see the changes in behaviour.
It's I don't think it's a black and white question
because it's also providing my my my kids play a
lot of Minecraft. Playing together in a collaborative way with
the friends that they have at school enables them to
(12:05):
stay in touch during the lockdown. So there are many,
many ways that the gaming is is providing a positive
benefit that we, I think we just need to tread carefully.
Rae Johnston (12:16):
Even the World Health Organisation suggested gaming as something for
people to be able to do safely during lockdown, to
be able to stay in touch with friends and family.
So it does feel like the tide is turning a little.
When it comes to how gaming is viewed by people,
but I'd love to hear from you about exoskeletons. This
(12:38):
is this is something that I have a bit of
a fascination about, and I believe that you have a
story about a family in Sydney that want their son
to try an exoskeleton. Can you tell me about that?
Alistair McEwan (12:50):
Yes, we're very excited about that. We this is an
example really of Cerebral Palsy Alliance, an amazing organisation. You
mentioned before that, you know, we have these scientists in
Australia and organisations. Cerebral Palsy Alliance is the oldest organisation
in the world in this area and the biggest funder
of cerebral palsy research, and we came up with this plan.
(13:14):
You know, exoskeletons are around a lot in Japan, in
the military. People are interested in them for taking care
of older people. You know, as we all get older,
I think we'll probably be finding exoskeletons more and more.
But what we wanted to do with Cerebral Palsy Alliance
completely differently was to say, how young can we, c an
(13:35):
we use an exoskeleton? So can we intervene early in
children under two years old and use an exoskeleton so
that those children can keep up with their other children
their age and meet those milestones as well?
Rae Johnston (13:52):
When we're talking about an exoskeleton, can you describe to
me what the ones you're working with look like?
Alistair McEwan (14:00):
A simple answer would be Big Hero six is what
we what we want to get towards, so let's say with children,
we're talking about soft exoskeletons, so the ones you might
have seen are like an electric motor and connected with some
metal parts to keep it together and give you a nice, strong,
hard exoskeleton that can help you stand up because we're
(14:24):
we're big at all. But children are so small and soft.
People might remember that that their joints are kind of
soft as well, so the idea is to use a
soft device like a like an air bag in a
car or a balloon. Very much like a balloon, actually
that that is just placed under their knee. And when
(14:44):
they need to stand up, the balloon is filled up
with air. And so they're softly assisted to stand up.
And when they want to sit down, they the air
leaves the balloon. And so they just as the the
balloon deflates , they slowly sit down. And if they fall over,
you know, we we really want to get to the
stage where this is completely wearable for the for the infants,
(15:08):
and they can play and crawl around and stand up
and do all the things that infants do rather than
being in sort of a robotic like device.
Rae Johnston (15:18):
That feels like it would make such a difference in
their lives.
Alistair McEwan (15:23):
It should . We know that that if if children
at that age can receive lots of intensive physical therapy,
as much as possible every day and have access to
a physical therapist, they'll do better. But not everyone can,
especially under these circumstances. And normally, you know, people in
remote communities and places like that, that's very difficult. So
(15:48):
to have a relatively low cost device that could be made
available to anyone, anywhere in the world. This device is
actually being made in Hong Kong. You know, it's an
international project and we really want to see it used
everywhere it possibly can.
Rae Johnston (16:04):
I'd love for you to tell me about Aaron. The
radio host, you've got a story about.
Alistair McEwan (16:10):
Yes, I met Aaron when he was a university student.
I think he was getting into radio then. So someone
with some interest that did it like yours, I guess.
And so Aaron is living independently now and very interested
in smart homes and things like that. So, you know,
(16:32):
talking to an assistant that can help do things around
the home for him. But one of his issues is
his hand mobility and he finds it difficult to use his
hand muscles. One question we were asked, we put to
him really was what would be something would be better
for you to have to kind of have an exoskeleton
(16:52):
on your hand or to have an implant in your
hand like a cochlear implant. I think the cochlear implants
that Nadia mentioned that, you know, you see these videos of
children when they have a cochlear implant turned on and
Rae Johnston (17:11):
Oh, it's beautiful.And the tear jerking moments of them hearing for the first time. Yeah.
So this is this is something that he was deciding
between an exoskeleton or a hand implant.
Alistair McEwan (17:22):
Yes, or surgery, permanent surgery. So that's another option. People
do undergo permanent surgery today to release their muscles, to
give them some function back, but that's a one way street. Whereas,
with something like a cochlear implant, there's technology involved and
it hasn't been proven yet, but you can turn it
on and off, or you can turn it up and
down in volume. So you could make your muscles less
(17:46):
tight or tighter, depending on how you're feeling that day.
So I think this is a huge e nabler in cerebral palsy,
because we know that the muscles are there, they're just
not being controlled well. So what we need to do
is enable the person to send the signal from their
brain or talk to Siri to tell their their implants
(18:08):
to do this. And then they could turn their muscles
on and off, and that could help them walk as
well without an exoskeleton.
Rae Johnston (18:17):
That's incredible. That's amazing, I've never heard of this before.
I'm so glad to be speaking to you and hearing
about this. Have we seen this being used widely or in,
you know, small groups? Or, where are we at with this?
Because this is amazing to me.
Alistair McEwan (18:33):
Yes, it is. In small groups, there are some challenges
to overcome. The technology is similar to a pacemaker or
a cochlear implant. And now there are brain implants as
well for people with Parkinson's. Some people might have seen those.
Someone you turn on the brain implant and the the
tremors in Parkinson's cease. Yes. And they all work really
(18:57):
well because the implant is attached with mine and that
doesn't move around the body because of the bone. Whereas
if we put them in a muscle, we have the
problem of of them moving around and and our muscles
move as well. So that's some of the things we
need to overcome. And we're making them much smaller, which
solves that problem as well.
Rae Johnston (19:17):
We've heard a lot about brain implants recently because their
usage is increasing for a whole range of reasons. And
I think one of the more mainstream reasons we hear
about is is Elon Musk wants to make some money
with Neuralink. And that gets a lot of attention. But
Neuralink hasn't even begun clinical trials yet. But we're, on
(19:37):
the other hand, y ou know, we've recently seen some promising
results come out of clinical trials for brain implants, but
it has raised a few ethical questions that I'd love
to hear from you about because with the closed loop
brain stimulation that can monitor and decode brain activity and
(19:58):
then automatically adjust treatment in those little electrical pulses, that
that's what's being used for epilepsy treatment at the moment.
And it's all based on software algorithms on artificial intelligence
and your changing brain activity, which could, in theory, have
(20:19):
some unintended effects on a person's sense of self or
potentially their personality. Putting an implant in your brain will
it, w ill it change who I am in any significant way?
And I'm wondering, how do we weigh up the potential
risks versus the benefits when we're talking about a technology
(20:40):
that can, in theory and potentially have such a profound
impact on people in both positive and negative ways?
Alistair McEwan (20:50):
It's a big, big question. Yeah, we definitely need to
have a huge debate in a very large community about this.
And I mean, Elon Musk has kind of helped this
along by, you know, by strongly going out and saying, Well,
it's now a race against us as humans and artificial intelligence,
which is, you know, an interesting view that we don't
(21:10):
know if that is the case. We certainly don't know,
haven't seen artificial intelligence has it doesn't have general intelligence yet.
You know, those things that we ask it to do.
Rae Johnston (21:22):
That's I think one of the important things for listeners
to understand is the, you know, the two types of
artificial intelligence that we have, you know, one of them
being applied artificial intelligence, which we see everywhere every day.
It's your voice assistants. It's autocorrect. It's, you know, those
basic things that you see artificial intelligence being used for.
(21:44):
And that's because applied artificial intelligence is, to my understanding,
an d Alistair, y ou're the expert. Correct me, if I'm wrong,
it is when we train a computer to do one
specific task a lot faster than we can do it
and hopefully better and more accurately. General artificial intelligence, on
(22:04):
the other hand, is where a computer could pick up
any task that a human brain could do and just
switch from task to task as required and apply learnings
from previous tasks to the current task. And that's just
something that computers can't do at the moment. They don't
(22:24):
have a whole lot of common sense. General artificial intelligence
is more something that's being developed in a lab deep
in Google right now. But correct me if I'm wrong, Alastair,
or you have another perspective on that.
Alistair McEwan (22:38):
Well, you know, it's interesting. You mentioned Google when you were,
you were talking about artificial intelligence, learning a new task.
And this is one thing we see with with the
smart assistants like the Google Assistant or Siri. They're hopeless
with accents, and they're hopeless with dysarthria speech, which is
what a lot of people with cerebral palsy have. But
(23:00):
they Google are attacking that they have a project to
record stage from from people with dysarthia, and anyone can
jump on and join that project. I mean, other companies
are doing the same Amazon and Apple and Microsoft. They
know that this is, you know, we as we've seen
with the campaigns around disability recently with the Paralympics, you know,
(23:21):
it's a big opportunity and they it's great to see
that they're taking advantage of that and everyone will benefit, hopefully.
Rae Johnston (23:30):
Yeah, Absolutely. Do you have any stories where people's lives
have been impacted in a in a positive way by
this kind of speech recognition?
Alistair McEwan (23:43):
Well, there's a company Voiceitt that works with Amazon. And yeah,
probably the one story I mentioned is about a young
man with cerebral palsy who, you know, took the very
simple approach. He uses a speech generating device to communicate.
So he recorded his speech generating device is sound and
(24:07):
taught Alexa to understand that.
Rae Johnston (24:11):
Oh, perfect, see, I've seen people do this when they've
got really heavy accents, but, you know, Alexa or Siri
haven't been able to understand in the past. So, you know,
you say it often from Scottish people, who have deep problems
with getting these voice assistants to understand them. So it's
fantastic to see that being used in that sense as well.
(24:33):
That's a great idea. There's a lot of, you know,
well-meaning people and well-meaning people working on programs to assist
people with cerebral palsy or with other disabilities who are
utilising artificial intelligence and technologies around that. Where have people
(24:54):
gotten it wrong, though, because I know that there are some,
some bad examples out there?
Alistair McEwan (25:00):
Certainly one I've heard about is where people have taken
algorithms and tried to use them in government services, such
as disability services that did happen in the US, with
the with the disability services budget in some states. You know,
it's kind of something similar to what we saw might
(25:20):
be happening here in the NDIS, where things are broken
down to a very simple form with basic numbers and thresholds.
And in this case, it was the difference between if
you'd had a fever or a pressure ulcer in the
last three days, you would have kept your disability budget.
But there were, t here were people who didn't. And so
(25:41):
they didn't. They had their budget cut and they were left. Unfortunately,
without a carer for some days and unable to do
things like just get out of bed or get to
the bathroom, you know, it's really, as you say, well-meaning programs,
but we can't rush in. We need to need keep
(26:03):
a person in the loop with the AI.
Rae Johnston (26:04):
That's exactly it. And that's whenever I see issues coming
up with artificial intelligence systems that are impacting people in
a negative way, i t's because we have tried to remove
that human element. And I think one of my favorite
sayings is that artificial intelligence is neither artificial or intelligent.
It is made by people and it is made to
do one thing very specifically. And we do need a
(26:29):
real life person to jump in and be monitoring it
and making sure that it's not making decisions that require
a human touch. You know, we can't teach a computer
to have empathy and to understand nuance and to understand
how complex human beings are and to be able to
provide exceptions to rules. We always need to have that
(26:50):
in place. So as exciting and beneficial as I can
be and all the good ways we can use it,
it's robots are never going to take our jobs. They're
absolutely not. You can't convince me of that. No way.
Not in not in areas like this.
Alistair McEwan (27:07):
I think you're right. I mean, that's it's you say
I'm finding it hard to teach engineers empathy, and they're
the ones who program, so that's that's definitely one of
the things we're trying to do is bring more empathy
into it, into how we teach future engineers because it's
it is so important.
Rae Johnston (27:28):
I think I think that's another reason why it's important
to have a lot of diversity within the teams that
are building these systems as well, so that a lot
of different life experiences and perspectives can be embedded into
these programs. You know, you only have to look example
at examples of systems that have been created and put
into place all around the world that have your racial
(27:50):
bias or gender bias built in as part of it.
It can be as damaging as the facial recognition software
in the U.K. that was detecting criminals that weren't criminals.
They just happened to not be the white men that
coded the systems so that artificial intelligence couldn't tell the
(28:14):
difference between facial features in anyone who wasn't a white man.
You need that diversity on the team. It's it's like
the women that don't get shown job listings because those
jobs have never really historically been filled by women. So
the historical data that's being used is biased from the
very beginning. But if we have those diverse teams and
(28:37):
if we have teams that understand who is going to
be using the product and who is going to be
benefiting from it, I think there's a lot of potential
for A.I. in this field in particular. I'm really excited
by what the future might hold.
Alistair McEwan (28:50):
I think we need the training data that includes all
those diverse examples. So one thing we're trying to do
is include as many people with disabilities in our research
and and have ways to for them to include their
data in systems like the voice systems or computer vision
systems as well.
Rae Johnston (29:12):
I think so I want to look forward to the
future for a moment. I want to imagine that we're
in the year 2040 and we've gotten a hold of
climate change. That's not an issue anymore. We're just focussing
on this particular issue. Best case scenario, we've solved the
climate crisis and we're just focussing on technology, specifically how
(29:35):
it's transformed the experience of people living with cerebral palsy.
What tech in particular do you believe could really be
a game changer in the future?
Alistair McEwan (29:47):
I have to say in response to that question by
use using technology, we've included people with disabilities in all
of our technology and development and research work, and they
were probably the key to solving the climate crisis as well,
because we're currently missing out on a lot of the
(30:08):
inclusion of a lot of people. I think by the
year 2040, we would have had technology in in early
life that I talked about before and stem cells that
would have helped reduce the rate of cerebral palsy right
down towards zero. I can say that with confidence because
the work of the Cerebral Palsy Alliance has reduced it
(30:28):
by 30 percent already.
Rae Johnston (30:30):
What kind of period of time was that over?
Alistair McEwan (30:32):
The last decade?
Rae Johnston (30:35):
Yeah, wow. And so that's a huge amount in a short period
of time.
Alistair McEwan (30:39):
Yeah. And just by focussing on what works and communicating
that and setting up the infrastructure and guidelines to, you know,
to give people the confidence to do to do those things.
I think by 2040 r eally, we'll have assistive technology similar
to how we use our mobile phones and apps, so
(31:02):
you'll be able to choose, you know, even in a
hardware sense, what type of technology you'd like to use
today and might be different tomorrow. It might look different tomorrow,
and you'll be able to choose that, you'll be able
to dial up or down the amount of assistance that
your muscles can provide if you have cerebral palsy. If
(31:24):
you prefer, you could wear an exoskeleton or you could
have your your robot helper that's in your house, come
and help you, it just depend on your preference that
day and people, people with communication difficulties or cognitive difficulties, y
ou'll be able to communicate with that robot as as
fast as as normal, speak speaking speed, probably through a
(31:47):
brain implant.
Rae Johnston (31:49):
So it's a whole it's not just one thing, is it,
it's a whole range of technologies really coming together that
will work. It's like having a a smorgasbord of tech
to choose from, depending on what your personal preferences and
needs are.
Alistair McEwan (32:05):
And most tech companies are very interested in supporting accessibility
and technology. So we really see that with, say, Microsoft.
I mean, the CEO of Microsoft has a has a
son with cerebral palsy. Windows supports eye gaze . Xbox has
an adaptive controller and other companies have come as well,
with Nintendo having an adaptive controller as well now. It's
(32:29):
just growing. And the companies, as I mentioned before, as
well Apple and Google, Amazon, they're becoming more and more accessible,
accessibility focussed. And of course, they know that by solving
this really hard engineering and technology design problem, they make
their devices better for everyone to use. And Rae, what would
(32:50):
excites you about the year 2040?
Rae Johnston (32:53):
I'm really excited for a future where technology is more diverse,
and we are including all of those people who have
been historically excluded from technology. I'm excited to see what
it can do. Once everyone is represented accurately and appropriately
(33:14):
and technology genuinely is for everyone, everything is going to
look so much more different and better when everyone can
be involved and have a say about what the future
looks like and what technology is being created. It's going
to be amazing. I can't wait. So we've painted this big,
optimistic picture of 2040, where we've got this whole range
(33:35):
of technology for people to be able to choose from
in order to make their lives easier and better. What
needs to happen right now and in the next few
years as well in order to make this happen? What
obstacles standing in our way and who do we need
to be listening to?
Alistair McEwan (33:57):
We really need to listen to families with disability, with
cerebral palsy and other disabilities. We really need to know
what technologies people want. Things change all the time. I
think with the COVID pandemic, people's interest in having telehealth
meetings and teleconferencing and gaming, preferences have changed. Acceptability has changed.
(34:20):
People's appetite for things like implants has even changed, so
we need to keep listening to them both more and more.
We want to do that even in virtual reality. So.
Getting people in and scaling that at right across Australia
and other countries as well, and in those environments we
(34:40):
can we can bring together data from those participants who
want to share their data and be part of the research,
the speech, their movements, the activity from their brain, their EEG
brain signals. All of that data can be really useful
and go into some of the machine, a rtificial intelligence machine
(35:01):
learning models that that have been developed with more mainstream populations.
So if we augment those models with that, with data
from a more diverse population, we'd be able to make
technology that helps more people. I think to to get
to a right of cerebral palsy of to go down
(35:22):
this as far as we have already, we really need
to pull together pediatricians, particularly those working in the neonatal
intensive care units. They have a lot of data that
that is going through their units. And Satya Nadella in
his memo in his book about hit refresh about how
he turned Microsoft around. He opens that book talking about
(35:44):
the data in the neonatal intensive care units not being used.
And so we need to bring all that data together.
Rae Johnston (35:51):
Yeah, it's been absolutely fascinating chatting with you, Alastair. I
really appreciate the time that you've taken. But before we go,
I I would like to know if there's anything in
particular that you are excited by, what fires you, what
lights you up inside when you think about utilising technology
(36:11):
to help people?
Alistair McEwan (36:13):
I think that's where I started was at heart, I'm
an electrical engineer and I see the body as a
very kind of electrical organism, so our cells communicate with
electrical signals. They also communicate with chemicals and things like
that o f course. F or me, like the fundamental problem with
something like cerebral palsy is the electrical connection between the
(36:34):
brain and the muscles has not developed in a normal
way because the brain injury happened before that connection was
made down the spinal cord. We are able with the
technology we have right now to to replace that or
augment that in a way. And we we just really
need to take that brave step of doing the trials.
(36:57):
There's a lot of work to do, but we can
do it right now, and I think that that really
excites me. It can be applied to to many disabilities, stroke,
spinal cord injury, people with prosthetic limbs from amputations. So
there's lots of applications of it, but it's a challenging
problem that a lot of engineers have shied away from.
(37:20):
I think we need to be brave and soldier on
and do it .
Rae Johnston (37:24):
Beautifully said. Thank you.
Ben McAlary (37:28):
You've been listening to Cerebral Conversations, a podcast produced by
Cerebral Palsy Alliance.
Andy McLean (37:36):
To learn more, check out the show notes to this
episode over at cerebral palsy.org.au/ cerebral conversations.
Ben McAlary (37:44):
And if you enjoyed the show, please rate or review
on your favorite podcast platform.
Andy McLean (37:50):
And to join the conversation, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
Ben McAlary (37:54):
Thanks again for listening!
Credit (38:07):
The music for this podcast was kindly supplied by Ocean Alley.
Check out the band's music on Bandcamp or visit oceanalley.com.au
We'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of
the land on which we're recording in Australia. We also
acknowledge the traditional custodians of the various lands on which
you're listening to us today, and we'd like to pay
our respects to elders past and present.
Andy McLean (00:28):
Hello and welcome to cerebral conversations. I'm Andy McLean.
Ben McAlary (00:34):
and I'm Ben McAlary. Hello. This episode is one for
the science and technology geeks and freaks like me. No, and really, anyone
who's curious about the meaning of life and the future
of humanity, sounds pretty intense, Andy.
Andy McLean (00:53):
Yeah, it does sound deep, but I tell you what,
our guests make it really entertaining. We've got multi award
winning STEM journalist and broadcaster Ray Johnston talking with engineering
technology expert Professor Alistair McEwan.
Ben McAlary (01:08):
Yeah, this conversation will get you thinking about a lot
of things, including how A.I., virtual reality, robotics and a
bunch of other tech could be game changers for people
living with cerebral palsy.
Andy McLean (01:23):
This is really the episode where we peer into the
crystal ball to ask what the future holds. And you
know what? There's quite a few reasons to be optimistic,
I reckon. So let's hear what our two technology gurus
have to say.
Rae Johnston (01:45):
So, Alistair, I'd like to start by why you came
to work for the Cerebral Palsy Alliance in the first place.
Alistair McEwan (01:53):
Oh, it's an interesting story. I'm an electrical engineer, so
it's a strange background to come into this area and
I was working on this obscure radio standard. I didn't
think it was going to go anywhere. It's named after
a Viking called Bluetooth, and I thought no one is
ever going to use this technology. So
Rae Johnston (02:14):
I think I may have heard of Bluetooth, but I think I
might be using it right now. So that was your PhD? That's incredible.
Alistair McEwan (02:20):
in that area. Yeah. At that time, my my my
first son was born and he had some challenges around
getting enough nutrition at new birth. And I found out
about this whole area where engineers can help out with
newborn babies who are struggling due to different problems and
cerebral palsy is really, you know, it's the culmination of
(02:42):
a lot of those problems. I think I find it
a really interesting area on that side of things.
Rae Johnston (02:48):
When I think cerebral palsy, I don't naturally think this
is something that engineers can help with. How does that work?
What do engineers bring to the table?
Alistair McEwan (02:56):
Honestly, most engineers run away when they hear about babies
who are sick. It's very difficult. You know, it is
a male dominated area, engineering, unfortunately, but biomedical engineering is
it's becoming more balanced, which is great. What we can
do is is really think about how to make the
technology for for the clinicians that look after the babies
(03:21):
and how really importantly, to to pick up the best data.
We hear a lot about our data being used by
big companies and little babies who are being heavily monitored
in a neonatal intensive care unit. Nadia Badawi in a
previous episode, she mentioned this that there's all this data
coming out of these monitors. You know, we we really
(03:44):
need to take advantage of what that's telling us and
help build models to predict which way those babies are
going to go if we treat them in different ways.
Rae Johnston (03:54):
So you're taking that data. What are you building with
that data? Are you building artificial intelligence systems? What's what's
happening with it?
Alistair McEwan (04:01):
Yeah, our aim is to build artificial intelligence that has
doctors in the loop. So it's to help clinicians make
decisions about what, what treatment to do to do, because
at the moment, they'll they'll look at that data. They'll
maybe look one day in the past, but it's difficult
to get a really long picture of what's going on
(04:23):
over a long period of time. So it's really about
giving them kind of that data visualisation. One of our
kind of futuristic projects is to develop like a virtual
baby that will be able to see how they develop
over time into the future and then simulate how changes
might change that development. So we could see, you know,
(04:44):
if if, if, say, a brain injury which could lead
to cerebral palsy would be, you know, the effect would
be lessened or in different ways.
Rae Johnston (04:52):
So that's incredible. And I can imagine that having applications
for your every baby really being able to be given,
essentially that's you're talking about having an instruction manual for newborns.
That's what every parent would want, right?
Alistair McEwan (05:07):
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, at the moment
there are parents with the children in neo natal intensive care, unfortunately.
And you know, if there's a pandemic going on, they
they it's challenging for them to go and visit. I
can just imagine we can create systems where maybe the
parents can have virtual reality goggles and you know, they'd
(05:29):
be saying, you know, how the baby is or even
during pregnancy. You know, I was always fascinated about what
was going on day to day, week to week. You know,
you could really, you know, give people a really like
an insight and create a stronger connection to the mothers
and fathers and all the family. So that's my origin story, Rae?
(05:50):
I'd be interested in hearing how you got involved in
working in STEM.
Rae Johnston (05:57):
I've got a little bit of a convoluted path into STEM, actually.
I was always one of those kids that loved science
and loved reading. I was I was always a bit
of a geek g rowing up, I wear that badge quite proudly,
and I actually started off wanting to be an actor.
And I was doing a whole bunch of, you know,
(06:17):
commercials and theatre and all of those sorts of things.
It was it was something that I was really pushed
to do by myself after I had my son quite young.
I had my son when I was 18 and and
I had a whole bunch of people around me tell
me that that was it for me now. You know,
you can't follow your dreams. And I went, well, no,
(06:38):
that's not how it works, because if I'm going to
show him, if I'm going to turn around and say
to him, you can be anything you want to be,
I have to follow my dreams. And I never thought
that there would be something that would combine science and performing.
But it turns out science communication fits that bill quite nicely.
And I went from acting into presenting, and one of
(07:01):
my first gigs was for a show reviewing video games.
And I just broadened my skillset. From there, I went
from covering just gaming to broader technology to everything that
exists on the internet into science as well. And I
became particularly passionate about the science that we're doing here
(07:21):
in Australia, that it's, you know, I'm a Wiradjuri woman,
I'm Aboriginal woman. And you know, this country, this continent
is something that is really important to me. So to
be able to see the work that's being done in
the realms of conservation and also bringing technology into that
was just a beautiful intersection of my interests. So I
(07:43):
am particularly fascinated by advances in technology that help make
our lives better. But I would love to hear from
you now. We've heard in other episodes the importance of
early intervention in cerebral palsy, and I'd like to know
from you what role you believe technology plays in this
(08:03):
space and the advancements over recent years. And also what
can we expect in the future? But we'll start with
what role it's playing now, what's happening right now?
Alistair McEwan (08:15):
There are lots of programs and studies about the effect
of early intervention, and it's really been shown to make
a huge difference. We know that it makes a big
difference in, you know, brain injury when it happens to
an adult. So it makes a lot of sense. It
would it would make a big difference in babies as
they develop and they also and children and of course,
(08:36):
children have the benefit that they have that they're still developing.
Their brain is still changing, it's wiring itself, making those connections.
And you mentioned gaming. I think gaming is a big
opportunity that we really want to take advantage of. So
we're thinking about how we can build on some of
the research that we're doing and include gamification of the
(08:58):
therapies that babies sometimes need to do or parents need
to do with with their children. People, obviously, you know,
they have large families, many kids, and they might have
a child with a disability and they feel that they
want to spend as much time as they can. And
we think we can, w e can support that with technology,
you know, as simple as something as a computer game,
(09:20):
even a way of controlling whether a video is playing
or not, you know, by doing that exercise that you
need to do with your muscle. Another one, a big one,
is communication. Nearly half the people with cerebral palsy have
communication difficulties because it's a physical disability, so it can
(09:40):
affect your voice as well the muscles you used to speak. Many,
many people will use different, different technology to communicate, such
as eye gaze , you know, those systems are they're not
like using, you know, a nice Apple mobile phone or
something like that. They're quite clunky. Then they're not designed
(10:02):
for a huge group. So making them more fun to use,
I think is a really key thing. And to point
to something else that Nadia mentioned, we know that that
some people, even with a high IQ, they have a
slower communication speed. So they're they're not able to communicate
at the rate maybe that we're communicating right now and
(10:24):
we want to use technology to to give them that
faster communication channel, maybe through a Bluetooth connection as well.
Rae Johnston (10:32):
Maybe maybe that's I'm always really interested in how eye
gaze technology is being used, that I've been familiar with
it being used in gaming for quite a few years now.
And yet there's even specific charities set up, like special
effect in the UK that t hey build these gaming systems
for people who use eye gaze to play and the benefits
(10:53):
that they can get from it, from social interaction to
problem solving skills, even just escapism is enormous. But we
do hear a lot of negativity around games and gaming.
There's a lot of concerns that parents might have putting
their children in front of these systems, even in a
therapeutic kind of way. What are your thoughts on this
(11:16):
and how would you alleviate some of those fears around,
you know, the terrors of gamification?
Alistair McEwan (11:22):
I think that the pandemic we're having has really taught
us a lot about how we should think about this.
I mean, it is a that is a question that a
ll of our community needs to talk about if you
as an engineer, if if I speak, you know, I'll
be very biased to to take the benefits of technology.
But I have, you know, I have two two children
(11:43):
who are home schooling and spending a lot of time
behind the screen. And I can see the changes in behaviour.
It's I don't think it's a black and white question
because it's also providing my my my kids play a
lot of Minecraft. Playing together in a collaborative way with
the friends that they have at school enables them to
(12:05):
stay in touch during the lockdown. So there are many,
many ways that the gaming is is providing a positive
benefit that we, I think we just need to tread carefully.
Rae Johnston (12:16):
Even the World Health Organisation suggested gaming as something for
people to be able to do safely during lockdown, to
be able to stay in touch with friends and family.
So it does feel like the tide is turning a little.
When it comes to how gaming is viewed by people,
but I'd love to hear from you about exoskeletons. This
(12:38):
is this is something that I have a bit of
a fascination about, and I believe that you have a
story about a family in Sydney that want their son
to try an exoskeleton. Can you tell me about that?
Alistair McEwan (12:50):
Yes, we're very excited about that. We this is an
example really of Cerebral Palsy Alliance, an amazing organisation. You
mentioned before that, you know, we have these scientists in
Australia and organisations. Cerebral Palsy Alliance is the oldest organisation
in the world in this area and the biggest funder
of cerebral palsy research, and we came up with this plan.
(13:14):
You know, exoskeletons are around a lot in Japan, in
the military. People are interested in them for taking care
of older people. You know, as we all get older,
I think we'll probably be finding exoskeletons more and more.
But what we wanted to do with Cerebral Palsy Alliance
completely differently was to say, how young can we, c an
(13:35):
we use an exoskeleton? So can we intervene early in
children under two years old and use an exoskeleton so
that those children can keep up with their other children
their age and meet those milestones as well?
Rae Johnston (13:52):
When we're talking about an exoskeleton, can you describe to
me what the ones you're working with look like?
Alistair McEwan (14:00):
A simple answer would be Big Hero six is what
we what we want to get towards, so let's say with children,
we're talking about soft exoskeletons, so the ones you might
have seen are like an electric motor and connected with some
metal parts to keep it together and give you a nice, strong,
hard exoskeleton that can help you stand up because we're
(14:24):
we're big at all. But children are so small and soft.
People might remember that that their joints are kind of
soft as well, so the idea is to use a
soft device like a like an air bag in a
car or a balloon. Very much like a balloon, actually
that that is just placed under their knee. And when
(14:44):
they need to stand up, the balloon is filled up
with air. And so they're softly assisted to stand up.
And when they want to sit down, they the air
leaves the balloon. And so they just as the the
balloon deflates , they slowly sit down. And if they fall over,
you know, we we really want to get to the
stage where this is completely wearable for the for the infants,
(15:08):
and they can play and crawl around and stand up
and do all the things that infants do rather than
being in sort of a robotic like device.
Rae Johnston (15:18):
That feels like it would make such a difference in
their lives.
Alistair McEwan (15:23):
It should . We know that that if if children
at that age can receive lots of intensive physical therapy,
as much as possible every day and have access to
a physical therapist, they'll do better. But not everyone can,
especially under these circumstances. And normally, you know, people in
remote communities and places like that, that's very difficult. So
(15:48):
to have a relatively low cost device that could be made
available to anyone, anywhere in the world. This device is
actually being made in Hong Kong. You know, it's an
international project and we really want to see it used
everywhere it possibly can.
Rae Johnston (16:04):
I'd love for you to tell me about Aaron. The
radio host, you've got a story about.
Alistair McEwan (16:10):
Yes, I met Aaron when he was a university student.
I think he was getting into radio then. So someone
with some interest that did it like yours, I guess.
And so Aaron is living independently now and very interested
in smart homes and things like that. So, you know,
(16:32):
talking to an assistant that can help do things around
the home for him. But one of his issues is
his hand mobility and he finds it difficult to use his
hand muscles. One question we were asked, we put to
him really was what would be something would be better
for you to have to kind of have an exoskeleton
(16:52):
on your hand or to have an implant in your
hand like a cochlear implant. I think the cochlear implants
that Nadia mentioned that, you know, you see these videos of
children when they have a cochlear implant turned on and
Rae Johnston (17:11):
Oh, it's beautiful.And the tear jerking moments of them hearing for the first time. Yeah.
So this is this is something that he was deciding
between an exoskeleton or a hand implant.
Alistair McEwan (17:22):
Yes, or surgery, permanent surgery. So that's another option. People
do undergo permanent surgery today to release their muscles, to
give them some function back, but that's a one way street. Whereas,
with something like a cochlear implant, there's technology involved and
it hasn't been proven yet, but you can turn it
on and off, or you can turn it up and
down in volume. So you could make your muscles less
(17:46):
tight or tighter, depending on how you're feeling that day.
So I think this is a huge e nabler in cerebral palsy,
because we know that the muscles are there, they're just
not being controlled well. So what we need to do
is enable the person to send the signal from their
brain or talk to Siri to tell their their implants
(18:08):
to do this. And then they could turn their muscles
on and off, and that could help them walk as
well without an exoskeleton.
Rae Johnston (18:17):
That's incredible. That's amazing, I've never heard of this before.
I'm so glad to be speaking to you and hearing
about this. Have we seen this being used widely or in,
you know, small groups? Or, where are we at with this?
Because this is amazing to me.
Alistair McEwan (18:33):
Yes, it is. In small groups, there are some challenges
to overcome. The technology is similar to a pacemaker or
a cochlear implant. And now there are brain implants as
well for people with Parkinson's. Some people might have seen those.
Someone you turn on the brain implant and the the
tremors in Parkinson's cease. Yes. And they all work really
(18:57):
well because the implant is attached with mine and that
doesn't move around the body because of the bone. Whereas
if we put them in a muscle, we have the
problem of of them moving around and and our muscles
move as well. So that's some of the things we
need to overcome. And we're making them much smaller, which
solves that problem as well.
Rae Johnston (19:17):
We've heard a lot about brain implants recently because their
usage is increasing for a whole range of reasons. And
I think one of the more mainstream reasons we hear
about is is Elon Musk wants to make some money
with Neuralink. And that gets a lot of attention. But
Neuralink hasn't even begun clinical trials yet. But we're, on
(19:37):
the other hand, y ou know, we've recently seen some promising
results come out of clinical trials for brain implants, but
it has raised a few ethical questions that I'd love
to hear from you about because with the closed loop
brain stimulation that can monitor and decode brain activity and
(19:58):
then automatically adjust treatment in those little electrical pulses, that
that's what's being used for epilepsy treatment at the moment.
And it's all based on software algorithms on artificial intelligence
and your changing brain activity, which could, in theory, have
(20:19):
some unintended effects on a person's sense of self or
potentially their personality. Putting an implant in your brain will
it, w ill it change who I am in any significant way?
And I'm wondering, how do we weigh up the potential
risks versus the benefits when we're talking about a technology
(20:40):
that can, in theory and potentially have such a profound
impact on people in both positive and negative ways?
Alistair McEwan (20:50):
It's a big, big question. Yeah, we definitely need to
have a huge debate in a very large community about this.
And I mean, Elon Musk has kind of helped this
along by, you know, by strongly going out and saying, Well,
it's now a race against us as humans and artificial intelligence,
which is, you know, an interesting view that we don't
(21:10):
know if that is the case. We certainly don't know,
haven't seen artificial intelligence has it doesn't have general intelligence yet.
You know, those things that we ask it to do.
Rae Johnston (21:22):
That's I think one of the important things for listeners
to understand is the, you know, the two types of
artificial intelligence that we have, you know, one of them
being applied artificial intelligence, which we see everywhere every day.
It's your voice assistants. It's autocorrect. It's, you know, those
basic things that you see artificial intelligence being used for.
(21:44):
And that's because applied artificial intelligence is, to my understanding,
an d Alistair, y ou're the expert. Correct me, if I'm wrong,
it is when we train a computer to do one
specific task a lot faster than we can do it
and hopefully better and more accurately. General artificial intelligence, on
(22:04):
the other hand, is where a computer could pick up
any task that a human brain could do and just
switch from task to task as required and apply learnings
from previous tasks to the current task. And that's just
something that computers can't do at the moment. They don't
(22:24):
have a whole lot of common sense. General artificial intelligence
is more something that's being developed in a lab deep
in Google right now. But correct me if I'm wrong, Alastair,
or you have another perspective on that.
Alistair McEwan (22:38):
Well, you know, it's interesting. You mentioned Google when you were,
you were talking about artificial intelligence, learning a new task.
And this is one thing we see with with the
smart assistants like the Google Assistant or Siri. They're hopeless
with accents, and they're hopeless with dysarthria speech, which is
what a lot of people with cerebral palsy have. But
(23:00):
they Google are attacking that they have a project to
record stage from from people with dysarthia, and anyone can
jump on and join that project. I mean, other companies
are doing the same Amazon and Apple and Microsoft. They
know that this is, you know, we as we've seen
with the campaigns around disability recently with the Paralympics, you know,
(23:21):
it's a big opportunity and they it's great to see
that they're taking advantage of that and everyone will benefit, hopefully.
Rae Johnston (23:30):
Yeah, Absolutely. Do you have any stories where people's lives
have been impacted in a in a positive way by
this kind of speech recognition?
Alistair McEwan (23:43):
Well, there's a company Voiceitt that works with Amazon. And yeah,
probably the one story I mentioned is about a young
man with cerebral palsy who, you know, took the very
simple approach. He uses a speech generating device to communicate.
So he recorded his speech generating device is sound and
(24:07):
taught Alexa to understand that.
Rae Johnston (24:11):
Oh, perfect, see, I've seen people do this when they've
got really heavy accents, but, you know, Alexa or Siri
haven't been able to understand in the past. So, you know,
you say it often from Scottish people, who have deep problems
with getting these voice assistants to understand them. So it's
fantastic to see that being used in that sense as well.
(24:33):
That's a great idea. There's a lot of, you know,
well-meaning people and well-meaning people working on programs to assist
people with cerebral palsy or with other disabilities who are
utilising artificial intelligence and technologies around that. Where have people
(24:54):
gotten it wrong, though, because I know that there are some,
some bad examples out there?
Alistair McEwan (25:00):
Certainly one I've heard about is where people have taken
algorithms and tried to use them in government services, such
as disability services that did happen in the US, with
the with the disability services budget in some states. You know,
it's kind of something similar to what we saw might
(25:20):
be happening here in the NDIS, where things are broken
down to a very simple form with basic numbers and thresholds.
And in this case, it was the difference between if
you'd had a fever or a pressure ulcer in the
last three days, you would have kept your disability budget.
But there were, t here were people who didn't. And so
(25:41):
they didn't. They had their budget cut and they were left. Unfortunately,
without a carer for some days and unable to do
things like just get out of bed or get to
the bathroom, you know, it's really, as you say, well-meaning programs,
but we can't rush in. We need to need keep
(26:03):
a person in the loop with the AI.
Rae Johnston (26:04):
That's exactly it. And that's whenever I see issues coming
up with artificial intelligence systems that are impacting people in
a negative way, i t's because we have tried to remove
that human element. And I think one of my favorite
sayings is that artificial intelligence is neither artificial or intelligent.
It is made by people and it is made to
do one thing very specifically. And we do need a
(26:29):
real life person to jump in and be monitoring it
and making sure that it's not making decisions that require
a human touch. You know, we can't teach a computer
to have empathy and to understand nuance and to understand
how complex human beings are and to be able to
provide exceptions to rules. We always need to have that
(26:50):
in place. So as exciting and beneficial as I can
be and all the good ways we can use it,
it's robots are never going to take our jobs. They're
absolutely not. You can't convince me of that. No way.
Not in not in areas like this.
Alistair McEwan (27:07):
I think you're right. I mean, that's it's you say
I'm finding it hard to teach engineers empathy, and they're
the ones who program, so that's that's definitely one of
the things we're trying to do is bring more empathy
into it, into how we teach future engineers because it's
it is so important.
Rae Johnston (27:28):
I think I think that's another reason why it's important
to have a lot of diversity within the teams that
are building these systems as well, so that a lot
of different life experiences and perspectives can be embedded into
these programs. You know, you only have to look example
at examples of systems that have been created and put
into place all around the world that have your racial
(27:50):
bias or gender bias built in as part of it.
It can be as damaging as the facial recognition software
in the U.K. that was detecting criminals that weren't criminals.
They just happened to not be the white men that
coded the systems so that artificial intelligence couldn't tell the
(28:14):
difference between facial features in anyone who wasn't a white man.
You need that diversity on the team. It's it's like
the women that don't get shown job listings because those
jobs have never really historically been filled by women. So
the historical data that's being used is biased from the
very beginning. But if we have those diverse teams and
(28:37):
if we have teams that understand who is going to
be using the product and who is going to be
benefiting from it, I think there's a lot of potential
for A.I. in this field in particular. I'm really excited
by what the future might hold.
Alistair McEwan (28:50):
I think we need the training data that includes all
those diverse examples. So one thing we're trying to do
is include as many people with disabilities in our research
and and have ways to for them to include their
data in systems like the voice systems or computer vision
systems as well.
Rae Johnston (29:12):
I think so I want to look forward to the
future for a moment. I want to imagine that we're
in the year 2040 and we've gotten a hold of
climate change. That's not an issue anymore. We're just focussing
on this particular issue. Best case scenario, we've solved the
climate crisis and we're just focussing on technology, specifically how
(29:35):
it's transformed the experience of people living with cerebral palsy.
What tech in particular do you believe could really be
a game changer in the future?
Alistair McEwan (29:47):
I have to say in response to that question by
use using technology, we've included people with disabilities in all
of our technology and development and research work, and they
were probably the key to solving the climate crisis as well,
because we're currently missing out on a lot of the
(30:08):
inclusion of a lot of people. I think by the
year 2040, we would have had technology in in early
life that I talked about before and stem cells that
would have helped reduce the rate of cerebral palsy right
down towards zero. I can say that with confidence because
the work of the Cerebral Palsy Alliance has reduced it
(30:28):
by 30 percent already.
Rae Johnston (30:30):
What kind of period of time was that over?
Alistair McEwan (30:32):
The last decade?
Rae Johnston (30:35):
Yeah, wow. And so that's a huge amount in a short period
of time.
Alistair McEwan (30:39):
Yeah. And just by focussing on what works and communicating
that and setting up the infrastructure and guidelines to, you know,
to give people the confidence to do to do those things.
I think by 2040 r eally, we'll have assistive technology similar
to how we use our mobile phones and apps, so
(31:02):
you'll be able to choose, you know, even in a
hardware sense, what type of technology you'd like to use
today and might be different tomorrow. It might look different tomorrow,
and you'll be able to choose that, you'll be able
to dial up or down the amount of assistance that
your muscles can provide if you have cerebral palsy. If
(31:24):
you prefer, you could wear an exoskeleton or you could
have your your robot helper that's in your house, come
and help you, it just depend on your preference that
day and people, people with communication difficulties or cognitive difficulties, y
ou'll be able to communicate with that robot as as
fast as as normal, speak speaking speed, probably through a
(31:47):
brain implant.
Rae Johnston (31:49):
So it's a whole it's not just one thing, is it,
it's a whole range of technologies really coming together that
will work. It's like having a a smorgasbord of tech
to choose from, depending on what your personal preferences and
needs are.
Alistair McEwan (32:05):
And most tech companies are very interested in supporting accessibility
and technology. So we really see that with, say, Microsoft.
I mean, the CEO of Microsoft has a has a
son with cerebral palsy. Windows supports eye gaze . Xbox has
an adaptive controller and other companies have come as well,
with Nintendo having an adaptive controller as well now. It's
(32:29):
just growing. And the companies, as I mentioned before, as
well Apple and Google, Amazon, they're becoming more and more accessible,
accessibility focussed. And of course, they know that by solving
this really hard engineering and technology design problem, they make
their devices better for everyone to use. And Rae, what would
(32:50):
excites you about the year 2040?
Rae Johnston (32:53):
I'm really excited for a future where technology is more diverse,
and we are including all of those people who have
been historically excluded from technology. I'm excited to see what
it can do. Once everyone is represented accurately and appropriately
(33:14):
and technology genuinely is for everyone, everything is going to
look so much more different and better when everyone can
be involved and have a say about what the future
looks like and what technology is being created. It's going
to be amazing. I can't wait. So we've painted this big,
optimistic picture of 2040, where we've got this whole range
(33:35):
of technology for people to be able to choose from
in order to make their lives easier and better. What
needs to happen right now and in the next few
years as well in order to make this happen? What
obstacles standing in our way and who do we need
to be listening to?
Alistair McEwan (33:57):
We really need to listen to families with disability, with
cerebral palsy and other disabilities. We really need to know
what technologies people want. Things change all the time. I
think with the COVID pandemic, people's interest in having telehealth
meetings and teleconferencing and gaming, preferences have changed. Acceptability has changed.
(34:20):
People's appetite for things like implants has even changed, so
we need to keep listening to them both more and more.
We want to do that even in virtual reality. So.
Getting people in and scaling that at right across Australia
and other countries as well, and in those environments we
(34:40):
can we can bring together data from those participants who
want to share their data and be part of the research,
the speech, their movements, the activity from their brain, their EEG
brain signals. All of that data can be really useful
and go into some of the machine, a rtificial intelligence machine
(35:01):
learning models that that have been developed with more mainstream populations.
So if we augment those models with that, with data
from a more diverse population, we'd be able to make
technology that helps more people. I think to to get
to a right of cerebral palsy of to go down
(35:22):
this as far as we have already, we really need
to pull together pediatricians, particularly those working in the neonatal
intensive care units. They have a lot of data that
that is going through their units. And Satya Nadella in
his memo in his book about hit refresh about how
he turned Microsoft around. He opens that book talking about
(35:44):
the data in the neonatal intensive care units not being used.
And so we need to bring all that data together.
Rae Johnston (35:51):
Yeah, it's been absolutely fascinating chatting with you, Alastair. I
really appreciate the time that you've taken. But before we go,
I I would like to know if there's anything in
particular that you are excited by, what fires you, what
lights you up inside when you think about utilising technology
(36:11):
to help people?
Alistair McEwan (36:13):
I think that's where I started was at heart, I'm
an electrical engineer and I see the body as a
very kind of electrical organism, so our cells communicate with
electrical signals. They also communicate with chemicals and things like
that o f course. F or me, like the fundamental problem with
something like cerebral palsy is the electrical connection between the
(36:34):
brain and the muscles has not developed in a normal
way because the brain injury happened before that connection was
made down the spinal cord. We are able with the
technology we have right now to to replace that or
augment that in a way. And we we just really
need to take that brave step of doing the trials.
(36:57):
There's a lot of work to do, but we can
do it right now, and I think that that really
excites me. It can be applied to to many disabilities, stroke,
spinal cord injury, people with prosthetic limbs from amputations. So
there's lots of applications of it, but it's a challenging
problem that a lot of engineers have shied away from.
(37:20):
I think we need to be brave and soldier on
and do it .
Rae Johnston (37:24):
Beautifully said. Thank you.
Ben McAlary (37:28):
You've been listening to Cerebral Conversations, a podcast produced by
Cerebral Palsy Alliance.
Andy McLean (37:36):
To learn more, check out the show notes to this
episode over at cerebral palsy.org.au/ cerebral conversations.
Ben McAlary (37:44):
And if you enjoyed the show, please rate or review
on your favorite podcast platform.
Andy McLean (37:50):
And to join the conversation, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
Ben McAlary (37:54):
Thanks again for listening!
Credit (38:07):
The music for this podcast was kindly supplied by Ocean Alley.
Check out the band's music on Bandcamp or visit oceanalley.com.au
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