AI and Assistive Tech Transforming Autism Care at Home

In this episode, Mike Carr discusses how the right technology—paired with strong support—can transform life for families of children with special needs. He highlights tools like the Kindle Scribe for caregiver productivity, and AI home assistants like Alexa Plus and Google Gemini, which offer safety through smart cameras and real-time alerts. Amazon’s upcoming “Search Party” feature may even help locate missing individuals. Mike also introduces OpenAI’s Sora 2, a text-to-video tool that creates realistic therapy aids by showing children performing skills they’re still learning. Together, these innovations promise more independence, safety, and peace of mind.

Chapters

• 0:00 When Tech Tests Your Patience
• 0:52 My New Reading Buddy: The Kindle Scribe
• 1:41 Smarter Homes with Alexa and Gemini
• 3:27 Real-Time Peace of Mind Through AI Cameras
• 5:43 Smarter Routines and Search Party Features
• 7:59 Sora 2: The Future of Therapy
• 11:34 A Smarter, More Supportive Future

Transcript

Mike Carr (00:04):

So I tend to be a bozo when it comes to patients that is, I am not a patient person when I try new tech, that doesn't work quickly and easily. I tend to scream and really throw a tantrum, sort of like my 6-year-old granddaughter when she wants a new stuffy and she already has 200 stuffy, so I'm not going to give her another stuffy. And that's sort of how I act when New Tech doesn't work for me, not the most adult behavior. However, if I can figure out how to use it, you probably can too. So today I want to talk about the right technology combined with the right support and how it can make our lives so much better for ourselves and for our special need kiddos. And I've got three things I'm going to cover today and I promise that the last of the three things might actually blow your mind because it certainly blew mine.

(00:52):

So first I'll quickly tell you about my newest reading companion and then we'll dive into some amazing AI powered home assistance features that could give you a real peace of mind. And finally, I want to talk about Sora two, which is open AI's new text to video tool, which is pretty darn cool and it has the potential, I think to revolutionize therapy for our kiddos. So let's go ahead and jump in. So my new reading buddy is the Kindle Scribe. Now this is not New Tech, but it lets me do something quickly and easily when I'm on Day of Duty. And of course I always pay attention to my son every second that I'm on my dad duty. But if he's at the computer playing his video games or doing his puzzles, then I can take my little Kindle scribe and it's got a little pencil kind of thing and I can actually take notes as I'm reading a Kindle book.

(01:41):

And of course I read Kindle books on autism and things related to that, which are really helpful. And it's just amazing, right? It's compact, it's easy, and it lets me make some progress. So two books I'm reading right now, neuro Tribes by Steve Silberman and from Struggle to Strength by Harry Psaros. And both books are pretty interesting, at least so far. I'm not through all of them, but I've started both of them. And of course when I'm on dad duty and paying attention to my son, I can't really read. But when I'm not paying attention to my son, then I get to play with my Kindle Strip. So highly recommend it's about 300 bucks on Amazon. The real game changer. Number two is the new announcements from Amazon and from Gemini. And this is where things get really interesting. The Wall Street Journal, earlier this week, Nicole Nguyen and Wilson Rothman, the two writers of the article talked about smart homes getting an AI renovation and what they're describing could be transformative for families, hopefully your family and my family too.

(02:38):

So I'm talking about Alexa Plus and Google's Gemini for home and they're getting a whole lot smarter and the features they now have can keep our kids safer and actually can give us more peace of mind, which we all know we need when we're the son or a daughter that's profoundly autistic or has complex special needs. So let me paint a picture of what's already possible. So remember those ring or nest cameras that you might have around your house. They just got a major AI upgrades. This is AI stuff and I love tech. I love the sparkly new things even though I didn't have a lot of patience for those things. I love to sort of take a look at 'em. But AI can now do using the footage that was on your nest or ring camera is it can go through hours of footage automatically and you can ask it specific questions and it can find what you're interested in.

(03:27):

So you can ask the question like, when did my child's attendant arrive today? Because you were out doing grocery shopping, you just want to make sure they showed up on time, right? Or you notice something on your son has skinned their knee and you say, okay, show me when my son fell down on the front porch and skinned his knee. And the system will scan through that day's video, find that exact moment and show you the clip. And it gets even better than that. Cameras can now give you real time updates about what's actually happening. So your camera might tell you, your son just opened the refrigerator, which our son loves to do to see what's in there and of course eat all kinds of things that he's not supposed to eat. Or it can alert you that the front door was left open after the caregiver leaves and forgot to turn on the automatic smart locks and the door locked automatically after five seconds or whatever.

(04:12):

It's like having an extra set of eyes that actually understands what it's seeing. Pretty darn cool. Now, there are some features that aren't quite out there yet, but I just have to mention these because they really sound pretty neat. Cameras are going to be able to start recognize specific people. Now imagine this, your camera can now recognize who it's looking at so you can get an alert if your child's in the bathroom playing with the faucets again, which our son loves to do. He's fascinated with water. And so he'll turn the faucets on, he'll leave them, he'll drink out of the faucets. I'd like to know that that's going on. Well, guess what? The cameras can now do this. Pretty cool. Our son also has seizures and man, if we're not paying attention and he has a seizure, we'd certainly like to get alert to that effect.

(04:53):

Or when grandma takes him outside to play in the yard, like to be able to know what's going on. Does grandma need any help? That kind of stuff. But my personal favorite, this is really amazing, is Amazon's new search party feature. Now it's initially launching to help find escape dogs and the way it works, it accesses multiple cameras throughout the neighborhood. But here's the exciting part, Amazon is working to extend this feature, not to dogs, but to people like seniors with dementia who wander around or think about what this can mean for your adult child that elopes or leaves home unexpectedly, the door was unlocked and they snuck out of the house and you know where they are. So you're freaking out and all of a sudden you can use this network of cameras throughout the neighborhood to help find your child. That's not just convenient, that could literally be lifesaving.

(05:43):

Now another breakthrough is how much easier it is to create helpful routines. No more wrestling with complicated apps. You just tell Alexa plus or the Google Gemini at home system what you want and it sets up everything automatically. You want all the lights off at 10:00 PM you tell it, turn all the lights off at 10:00 PM sets the alarm, takes care of it, and your lights have to be all hooked into this thing. But assuming they are, that's pretty darn cool. Or need to make sure your doors are locked at bedtime. You tell it once and the system can do that for you. Or it can even learn your family's patterns like when specific people are usually home and it can automatically adjust as a result of that temperature and lighting and even put on your son's favorite music as he's walking in the door and he's had a tough day and you want to sort of calm him down.

(06:29):

Alexa or Google Echo can sort of learn that from your son's playlist, what he plays at home and adjusted accordingly. And because these AI assistant are so much smarter, now you can ask it even complex questions. Did my son have a temper tantrum today and throw his iPad across the room? You notice the iPad was in the corner because I wonder how it got there, not where it normally is. So the system will not only find the relevant clips, it can show you the incident and it can show you what happened before and what happened afterwards. What was the antecedent to the behavior? Why all of a sudden did he get really upset? Why did he throw the iPad across the room? And then what happened afterwards? Now, not all this is going to work perfectly right off the bat, but it will improve over time.

(07:17):

And as a parent of a profoundly autistic son, I can certainly see how this technology could be a real game changer for us and probably for you guys too. So whether Michael's at home or spending a night at respite house with our J13.org here in Austin, Texas, we have that peace of mind and that comfort because the cameras can help us pay attention when even we're not there and they can give us daily highlight summaries. Things like what did go on the day, what were the highlights of the day, what deliveries did show up, who delivered them. I mean, just whatever it is that you're interested in. A lot of this can happen without you being on top of it and worrying about it every minute of every day. Now, the third thing I want to talk about, which I mentioned already, which to me is actually the coolest of all three is Sora.

(07:59):

Two, this could really be revolutionary for us and perhaps for you two, if your son or daughter is going through any kind of therapy right now, we've been working on for months something that we thought would be really pretty cool and we were using AI generated realistic avatars that allow our son to watch himself performing a skill he hasn't yet mastered. The way this works is you take a few pictures of your child with your smartphone and you record some audio. Now if your son or daughter's nonverbal, just whatever words they might have, if they have any words at all, you record them. And AI can mimic and come up with a voice that sounds like they would sound if they have a full set of vocabulary. And that's pretty cool. So now we're talking about, and you don't have to spend a lot a minute or two of recordings or just a few pictures, get this to work.

(08:46):

So we did this for Michael and we were using tools from Eleven Labs and we also used something called Hagen. And we created a video of our son saying words he hasn't yet mastered. So lemme show you a quick example. Take a look at this quick video sleep ball. And what you just saw is completely AI generated. Michael never held his iPad that way or waved it like he did in that video, and he never said the word that he was saying in that video. But now he can learn by watching and hearing himself in his own voice saying something he hasn't mastered yet. Now producing these videos has been very time consuming and pretty complicated. But here's where Soah two comes in and changes everything. Once you've taken those few pictures and you recorded some audio, you can simply give to a text prompt of whatever you want it to do and it creates a short video of your son or daughter and it looks like your son or daughter, right?

(09:44):

It recreates the image of them. You cannot tell the difference doing something they've never done before. So think about all the applications. This is like visual modeling through self recognition. We know Michael loves to watch himself and if he can watch himself like in speech therapy saying words he hasn't yet mastered and he's, he's looking at himself saying these words in his own voice, pretty darn cool. So it could work for occupational therapy, it could work for physical therapy, it can show your child doing things actually activities they haven't yet mastered, like recreational therapy, maybe dribbling a basketball, vocational training, even life skills. So here's an example. Our son never will pull the fitted sheet over the edge of the bed. He just won't do it. And so colleagues and caregivers will work with him forever and he just can't figure this out. So how cool would it be if he watches himself now actually putting the fitted sheet over the right way and he gets all the cheering and applause and clapping in the background and he watches himself over and over again doing something that he himself hasn't yet mastered.

(10:52):

So that's pretty darn cool. Right now we're on the waiting list restore too. So we haven't actually tried this yet, although one of our tech guys evidently got on this morning. So we're super excited about what he is going to be able to discover, but we think this is going to be a game changer. We think it's going to work across all kinds of therapies. So think about speech therapy, learning how to talk better occupational therapy, fine motor, motor skills, the gross motor skills, vocational skills on the job training where he's watched himself do some things on the job out in the real world that he hasn't mastered. Recreational therapy, learning how to dribble that basketball or play on that Special Olympics team, whatever that skill is. So this is a pretty bright future and this stuff is not that expensive and I don't think it's going to be that complicated.

(11:34):

As I said, I have the patience of a nett and zero patience. I think we're standing at a really special moment. The technology we have access to today isn't just about convenience or novelty. We're talking about tools that can gently transform how we care for and support our special needs kiddos from AI powered cameras to give us peace of mind and help keep our kids safe to voice assistance that make our homes work the way we need them to. Revolutionary therapy tools, let our children see themselves succeeding. Now, this is the kind of innovation that can change lives. And what excites me most is that we're just at the beginning. These tools will only get better. They're only going to get smarter and more helpful. Yeah, there are going to be some bumps. Not everything's going to work perfectly at first, but I think the trajectory is clear, right?

(12:19):

It's pointing toward a future where technology just doesn't make things easier. It opens up possibilities we never imagined. And all it takes is a smartphone and some fairly inexpensive devices like you might already have an Alexa or an Echo at home. And a lot of these are compatible with some of this new AI stuff. And if they're not, the new devices aren't super expensive. So I don't think it's going to be cost prohibitive. So if you face challenges like some of the ones I've described every day like we do, this text should give you hope. It means more independence for our kids. It means more peace of mind for us, better learning opportunities, ongoing training, ongoing learning forever, alright, growth and learning, and ultimately a better quality of life for everyone. So thanks for watching and be sure and give your kiddo a big hug today. And just as importantly, do something special for yourself. Have a good rest of your week. See you.