Reporting Risks in AI-based Assistive Technology Research: A Systematic Review
This highlights a critical gap in inclusive evaluation and risk reporting for AI assistive technologies, which is incremental as it synthesizes existing research rather than proposing new methods.
The study conducted a systematic review of AI-based assistive technologies for visual impairments, finding that most testable prototypes lacked human evaluations with the target community and many studies failed to report failure cases or risks.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly employed to enhance assistive technologies, yet it can fail in various ways. We conducted a systematic literature review of research into AI-based assistive technology for persons with visual impairments. Our study shows that most proposed technologies with a testable prototype have not been evaluated in a human study with members of the sight-loss community. Furthermore, many studies did not consider or report failure cases or possible risks. These findings highlight the importance of inclusive system evaluations and the necessity of standardizing methods for presenting and analyzing failure cases and threats when developing AI-based assistive technologies.