Description
Given the increasing role of artificial intelligence (AI) in many decision-making processes we investigate the presence of AI bias towards terms related to a range of neurodivergent conditions including autism ADHD schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). We use eleven different language model encoders to test the degree to which words related to neurodiversity are associated with groups of words related to danger disease badness and other negative concepts. For each group of words tested we report the mean strength of association (Word Embedding Association Test (WEAT) score) averaged over all encoders and find generally high levels of bias. Additionally we show that bias occurs even when testing words associated with autistic or neurodivergent strengths. For example embedders had a negative average association between words related to autism and words related to honesty despite honesty being considered a common strength of autistic individuals. Finally we introduce a sentence similarity ratio test and demonstrate that many sentences describing types of disabilities e.g. "I have autism" or "I have epilepsy" have even stronger negative associations than control sentences such as "I am a bank robber".