AI & Disability: A Roundtable Discussion
A History & Theory of New Media event
with Jeff Nagy, Assistant Professor, Communication and Media Studies, York University, and Os Keyes, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Massachusetts, Lowell
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Monday, September 28, 2026
5:00 — 6:30 PM
Eugene Jarvis Auditorium,
Grimes Engineering Center
RSVP here! Save the event to your bCal here!
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What does AI have to do with disability, and what is it doing to disability? This question undergirds a roundtable discussion featuring Jeff Nagy and Os Keyes.
In brief individual presentations, followed by a moderated discussion, these two experts in the field will tackle the question of AI and disability from a range of distinct and overlapping perspectives.
Professor Nagy will examine the remaking of psychiatric disability in an AI era through the case of algorithmic depression diagnostics. Tracing a deep history of attempts to bring computing to bear on depression, he argues that the shift from clinic to program and platform, and the substitution of machine learning features for diagnostic criteria, are rewiring the political economy of diagnosis and overwriting disability identities. Through close reading of contemporary systems and the datasets they depend on, he reveals an emergent technopolitics of disability in action, one that operates at cross-purposes with disability community and activism.
Dr. Keyes will ask what the history of computational psychiatry teaches us about the political economy of diagnostics. The role of AI in psychiatry is often framed as novel, and focused on improving efficiency and patient access to care. But neither is the case. AI has a long history in the upper echelons of psychiatry, as a field and a practice, and that history has consistently been entangled with broader political conflicts over who plays a role in shaping diagnosis and treatment, and under what conditions. Beginning with the start of computational diagnostics in the 1960s, he will trace out the history of how (and why) computational approaches to psychiatry have come in and out of vogue, arguing that the ultimate purpose of these diagnostic tools is to reshape the political economy of diagnosis and disability.
About Jeff Nagy
Jeff Nagy is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at York University. He is a historian of computing and AI, currently focused on the intersection of AI development, the behavioral sciences, and disability. He holds a PhD in Communication from Stanford University. With the DISCO Network, he is a co-author of Technoskepticism: Between Possibility and Refusal (Stanford University Press, 2025). His research and writing have appeared in Parapraxis, n+1, New Media and Society, Technology and Culture, and elsewhere.
About Os Keyes
Dr. Os A. Keyes is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. A widely published and award-winning scholar of everything from the history of medicine to critical approaches to Artificial Intelligence, their first book, Trans Science, is under contract with University of Washington Press.
About History & Theory of New Media Lecture Series
The History & Theory of New Media Lecture Series brings to campus leading humanities scholars working on issues of media transition and technological emergence. The series promotes new, interdisciplinary approaches to questions about the uses, meanings, causes, and effects of rapid or dramatic shifts in techno-infrastructure, information management, and forms of mediated expression. Presented by BCNM, these events are free and open to the public.
Accessibility
BCNM events are free and open to the public. This event will be held in-person, on the UC Berkeley campus. We strive to meet all access and accommodation needs. Please contact (raphaelcohen [at] berkeley.edu) with requests or questions.
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