AI, human connection and the future of neuroaffirming support with Shae Rodgers

Laetitia: Welcome to Neurodivergent Pulse, where we explore the often misunderstood world of neurodivergence with experts, parents, teachers, and therapists. Grounded in lived experience, each bite sized episode gives you something practical to try. I am your host, Laetitia Andrac, AI expert, neurodivergent mum, and founder of Understanding Zoe.

Laetitia: This podcast is recorded on Dharawal country. I acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded. It always was, and always will be Aboriginal land.

Laetitia: Hello, Shae. Thank you so much for joining the Neurodivergent Pulse podcast.

Shae: Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to have a chat today.

Laetitia: It is going to be one of my favourite topic.

Laetitia: I'm being a nerd about AI, so we are going to talk a lot about AI today, so if you are someone who has a special interest in AI, you will love this podcast episode. So first, let's start with who you are, Shae, for anyone who is listening to this podcast, and they haven't had the chance to connect with you in the past.

Laetitia: So can you take us back to who you are and what drew you to speech pathology, and then how did you move from there to AI?

Shae: Ooh, it's definitely been a bit of a journey for me. I've been a speech pathologist for almost 20 years. So I started out in, always working in private paediatric practice with a special interest in working with neurodivergent kids and teens.

Shae: I was really drawn to speech pathology from a very young age. I wanted to be a speechie since I was 15, so I just had my goal, and I just went for it. And yes, I guess I was really motivated by making sure. Like, my mission and drive is to sort of help children make sure they have a voice, and that kind of stems from my own background and upbringing and things like that, and it's just sort of an innate drive in me.

Shae: And then, yeah, I was working in that area of practice for 16 years, and then AI kind of hit the scene, and my neurodivergent brain was very excited by all the innovation and tech and possibilities. So yeah, I dived into that straight away as soon as it was released and, problem solving, figuring it out, how it could help me in my work and my family life.

Shae: And yeah, so I love that. So that's kind of led me towards my AI education business, that I help speeches and allied health clinicians understand and use AI practically in their work.

Laetitia: I love that. It's like we all had a moment where we realised the power of AI, and I love hearing about those moments where I'm like, "Oh my goodness, this can do this and that."

Laetitia: For me, it was back in 2014 when I had this team of machine learning and data engineer, data scientists, and just having moments being like, "Oh my gosh, we can do that?" And then when ChatGPT came out and we were part of the first one million paid subscriber, it was just this moment of now it is accessible without having such a large team of data scientists and analysts, engineer, and all of those experts.

Laetitia: So it was really making it available to everyone, and I love that. Which actually is something that you're committed to do, right? Really making sure that everyone can really understand AI in the best way. And there is this, on top of your website, because I love to always research a bit before an interview, you say, "Save you, save you time with every resource."

Laetitia: And that's really how AI can help, right? So including for parents, for clinician, like what is the loads that clinician carry, therapists carry, and that actually AI can help solve?

Shae: Oh, wow. I mean, it's such a busy job being a speech pathologist that you just kind of wear so many different hats, both clinically trying to support your caseload and all the people connected to them and their village, like, all of the caregivers and all the different people in the team.

Shae: And, going back to that tagline that you said about saving you time with every resource, that's been really interesting because I've had this side project passion business for, like, oh, 10 years or something, and back then it was, you know, me creating all the resources from scratch and doing all the graphics and putting it all together both for families and for other speech pathologists,

Shae: and trying to share those resources and, making, trying to make apps and all this stuff. But now with AI on your side, like, there's so many possibility, and you can achieve so much more in terms of, using those resources to help you save time and to reach those outcomes. And I love using AI to really strengthen, like, with the resources now that are available to create with AI, the edge for me is really being able to create something that's super interest based, and the difference that that makes to your client engagement and enjoyment in providing the service and everything is really cool, too.

Laetitia: I love that. Like, using AI for personalisation purposes, for really having this care that is so specific to an individual that then you're actually enhancing the care. And some things that you shared with me prior to the interview is the load of paperwork that clinician have in their day to day.

Laetitia: And you shared with us that it's about 30 to 50% of their week on paperwork, so this is also really a big shift. So we see the shift for the clinician, but also for the person who is benefiting from personalised care. Do you wanna add something to this?

Shae: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's a really behind the scenes thing that, you know, if you're accessing services, it can be a bit hard to understand how much goes on behind the scenes apart from those face to face sessions.

Shae: And a lot of my AI education for supporting speech pathologists and clinicians is to try to bring AI into those different areas of practice, so that you really can reduce the load, and you've got more capacity for that clinical work, that personable clinical work that is where you kind of shine in your uniqueness.

Shae: So I think, using AI to help you with your notes and your reports and research and, making these personalised resources. I love now that with AI I can make a personalised resource, like, based on that particular client, based on that family, based on their accessibility needs.

Shae: Like, whether I make it visual or whether I make it a handout or whether I make it like, there's so many, an online resource or a printed resource. There's so many different options, and I just love that that's something that can integrate into my practice now, whereas before, the time was spent just writing the note.

Shae: Now I can actually write the note and provide a personalised email to the family with an attached, like, handout or resource that they can practically use after the session as well. It's just such a difference in the way that, you know, we used to work versus the way that you can work now with AI in your practice.

Laetitia: I love that, and it's a beautiful segue to the next question, which is you have some people who are a bit against AI because they think that AI will replace the clinician. And you don't believe that, which you just shared here, and we don't believe that in Understanding Zoe as well. But, what is happening then between those clinician who are embracing AI and those who are resisting AI?

Laetitia: What have you noticed?

Shae: Yeah, there is a real sort of spectrum of people and their understanding of AI, their use of AI, and their sort of mindset around AI. And I think it really comes down to developing good AI literacy foundations and having a really good understanding of what AI is, how it can help you.

Shae: Similar to, like, when the internet was first created, like, okay, how can we use this to benefit us? But what are the things we need to be careful about? And really understanding those, like, the different use cases, understanding the privacy and the compliance and everything, it sort of stems from that.

Shae: So if you have a strong foundation, then it gives you some confidence going forward so you can know, like, if you're evaluating a tool, like is this safe to use clinically or is this something that I just use for a resource creation with de-identified information? And the more you can understand and evaluate different AI tools, then that can help you build confidence in knowing that you're using AI ethically.

Shae: Because speech pathologists and allied health professionals, that's just part of the core of what we do and who we are and the way we work. And that first step is really important, and I think people who are a bit afraid of AI, like, that's really the area to kind of hone in on, and then kind of build up from there.

Laetitia: I just love what you said because I think it's a journey of understanding better the power, the limitation, the ethics, the good use. And not everyone has a special interest in AI. I've definitely have one since 2014, and you have one for the last three to four years. But it's not everyone is developing a special interest, which is where you actually launched recently and curated, through SpeechPathology.ai, the first AI tool library for speechy.

Laetitia: And then you review every tool and you say in terms of privacy, in terms of data storage, compliance and all of that, so you make it easier for them. So what does that, what does reviewing those tools mean behind the scene for you? Like what are the criteria that you review? Just to educate a bit more the audience when some of them may be like, "Oh, I don't know about AI."

Laetitia: And feel free also to share if you want about Understanding Zoe and your perception of it. But yeah, very keen to hear about this because this is something that we really need to embed in everyone. There is no way to resist the AI revolution. It is here. It's like resisting the Industrial Revolution.

Laetitia: But it's about understanding how you wanna fit in that revolution, and being equipped with the right knowledge and the right approach so that you can choose how you wanna be part of this revolution. So yeah, go ahead.

Shae: Yeah. No, thanks for bringing that up. I'm really excited about the new speech pathology AI tool library that I've just put together, because it's really a culmination of, like, the last 18 months or so where I've just really been deep diving into different AI tools and trying out different things in my practice.

Shae: And lots of people in the community, speech community, are like, "Oh, has anyone, does anyone know an AI tool that can help me with this?" Or, "Is there an AI that does this, or is that a unicorn?" So yeah, it's really been so good to kind of collate all that time and effort and energy into, like, one place where I can reference those tools.

Shae: And for the tool, including the tools I have this huge, massive spreadsheet, but basically I look at, I meet with a lot of AI developers, because I love to meet the people behind the AI tools and really understand, like, where they're coming from, what their experience is, and dive into sort of the privacy and compliance.

Shae: And also looking at different use cases for speech pathologists, because some tools are actually made for teachers, but they're a great use cases for speech pathology. So trying to look at it, through our clinical, practical lens as well. Data storage, different workflows that, you know, how you can sort of connect different tools together.

Shae: So many different things that I look at with the AI tools. And I started using Understanding Zoe, oh, probably, I don't know, a few months ago. And it was, it's really a bit of a standout tool for me, and I decided to feature it on the homepage at the launch. And it's because I use Understanding Zoe in my personal and professional life, and I did find that it replaced a few tools that I was already trying to work across a few different areas.

Shae: And yeah, I've found it to be a great resource for myself, which I'm happy to share more about because it's really been a good support that I use very often.

Laetitia: Thank you, Shae. And actually, that's how we met because you, when you say you're meeting developers and learning about the practice and what they're building, that's how we met, and I really wanna put an emphasis on that, you know, just doing that as a side thing and not really putting the due diligence that needs to be put on this.

Laetitia: You're really critically analysing and testing and reviewing and giving feedback on the tool. So that's really good that you created this library, because I think that's what's missing today. It's like this sense of overwhelm where you have so many tools at your disposal, and when you're not on top of AI, you don't know which one to trust, and some of them have a bit of a hype, but actually it's not that helpful and the other way around, you know?

Laetitia: I don't know if you wanna add anything.

Shae: Yeah, and some of them it's really tricky, like when you're diving into their privacy and compliance and things, like it can be really hard to even figure out, like, if they are or are not compliant. There's a lot of sort of greyness in there when you're trying to analyse all these different privacy policy pages.

Shae: So that, I know that that's something that clinicians don't really have time to do. And I also made like an AI ethics evaluator GPT to help with this process, because I just found it was a sort of same kind of process, the same questions that you're asking and trying to find all the different privacy policies and data storage policies for every tool.

Shae: Like, that takes a lot of time as well. So that GPT is on my tool library as well for anyone to use for free, because that evaluation piece is just such an important process, part of the process.

Laetitia: I love it. I love that you nerd out on it. So now that we, I have seen you sharing a bit about your specialty on AAC and communication technology, supporting young people, as you said, to give a voice to everyone, everyone having a way to communicate.

Laetitia: And so you've shared a bit more about how AI is opening up communication access in ways that were not possible before. So I would love for you to share a bit more about this, because I think this is such a positive message and a positive use of AI as well.

Shae: Yeah, I get super excited by this because I've been working in the field of AAC for, like a long time, 10 plus years.

Shae: And you kind of, it's really rewarding to give someone a system and be able to, they can then express themselves through this communication device. But then over time, there's frustrations that occur. Like, it can be slow to put together a message. It can be difficult to kind of engage in more conversational, back and forth.

Shae: And this is just from my experience working with children, progressing up to teens. And I'm very excited by a lot of the different AI and AAC integrations that are coming out now, and some really innovative programs that are there leveraging the AI for things like the prediction and the context awareness.

Shae: So it really is allowing the AAC user to kind of be a bit more efficient with their message and not taking so long to kind of get across their message to others. It certainly comes with some cautions, I guess, like anything that, if you are using an AAC that integrates AI, that you still need to have the consent of the user and for them to understand that, and just to monitor if there are any, like, if it, how it's benefiting them because, for example, like, it might predict something that's really accurate and really helps them get the message across that they really wanted, but it might also predict something that is not in line with what they wanted to say.

Shae: And then, they're provided with those limited options that the AI has predicted. So there's definitely pros, a lot of pros, and just, being mindful of some of the limitations and ethical uses of those programs. But so many different AAC apps are integrating AI now, just little AI features to make programming easier, or the context awareness, predictability, all those types of things.

Shae: So, there's some really exciting tools coming out and updates.

Laetitia: So good, what you shared. And also, like I always say, and I'm sure we had this conversation together, which is about how technology can be used as a tool or as a weapon. So it depends how you use it, and, of course, sovereignty in the time of AI is really important.

Laetitia: So as you said, having some guardrail, and as it's a predictive model, because behind AI there is always math coming and data and things like that. I'm not gonna get into the origin of AI, but if someone wants to learn from me and talk about how deep modelling happened and things like that, but definitely you will need to come and give feedback on what is right, what is wrong, and correcting those outputs.

Laetitia: So thank you so much for putting that caveat. It shows so much knowledge and expertise in this space, so really encourage anyone to dive deeper into your expertise. Sorry, you wanna say something?

Shae: Yeah. Okay. And I think it's something to keep in mind too, as clinicians or even parents or, you know, consumers, that you can actually have input into these AI tools.

Shae: And a lot of AI developers are really keen to get feedback from users or feedback from clinicians and partner with people in the allied health space because they want their tool to be really helpful. And I know Understanding Zoe does that really well, and I think it's really good to, I would encourage people to kind of reach out to the AI developers and make sure that us allied health clinicians are having input into these AI tools that we'll ultimately be using as part of our practice.

Laetitia: Yeah, definitely. I love that, which is actually a perfect segue to our next question. There may be, like, a parent's hearing one of those conversation we had and being like, "Oh, if my child's speech pathologist is using AI, how do I feel about this?" What would you encourage family to know, or which question could they ask their therapist about privacy, consent, or how AI is used in the care of their child, children, or themselves?

Laetitia: 'Cause I think, as we said, it's like, a cooperation and a collaboration. And for families themselves, like, which tool would you recommend for them, or anything you feel safe sharing today about?

Shae: Yeah, I think it's, like it's becoming more and more commonplace as consumers or patients when we go to see a doctor or a specialist, and we're asked to consent for them to use AI notes, and that's something that is happening more and more.

Shae: And I think it's important to remember that you have rights. You have rights to say, to ask questions and find out about what the program is and ask questions about what type of health information is gonna be put into the tool. And as health professionals, we need to be on top of making sure that our clients understand the different AI tools that we're using and understand how we're protecting their information.

Shae: So I think it's having open conversations, and that can really bring benefits as well because I know that a lot of patients and consumers, and families are using AI as well. And so opening that conversation about, "Oh, okay, well, I'm using AI," and the client's using this other type of AI, and we can really have a role as therapists to help our clients and their families to learn how to use AI well and be cautious around the guardrails and ethics and choose the right tools that can help them and make sure that they are using it in a way that just supports the child's therapy journey, not kind of replacing any therapy advice.

Shae: So we have a big role in those discussions with families and clients and patients for sure.

Laetitia: Yeah, definitely. Definitely, and I always, personally in my own lived experience going and seeing different clinician, different specialists for myself or for my children, I really appreciate transparency.

Laetitia: So anyone who's listening to this, you can definitely ask for transparency, and if you're a clinician, just expect this sense of transparency. I think we're moving more and more into this age where it's better to know everything than hiding it and then people discovering afterwards. So it's very beautiful what you shared.

Laetitia: And so last question, then I promise I let you go because I feel I've grilled you with so many of them. But can you tell us about one moment that you have witnessed in the therapy room or in the communities that showed you exactly what genuine needs, support, and belonging look like for a neurodivergent young person, with the technology quietly doing its job in the background?

Shae: Oh, this is a bit tricky to choose one. I mean.

Laetitia: Well, you can choose as many as you want.

Shae: Well, a couple. I would say that personally, for me, using Understanding Zoe for my son and myself has been something that has been very supportive. Being able to kind of log everything in the one spot, and getting sort of like a little bit of coaching and reassurance from the chatbot part of Understanding Zoe, I use, if I'm having a conflict with my son or I'm trying to problem solve something, where I can really kind of talk through that and make sure it's flagged so then, if we're going to psychology appointments, then I can sort of bring up that information in Understanding Zoe.

Shae: It'll help me prepare for my appointment and it's really like a very smart diary in some respects. But extremely helpful in helping me in my parenting and also keeping track of everything that's happening. I guess another, like a clinical example would be, a young man that I started working with, in the past year, and he really had no form of communication system, and I had the opportunity to find and develop something for him that really worked for him and the way that he communicates.

Shae: And he really loves photographs and so really just being able to tailor something that was just specific for him. And it was this really interesting blend between high tech and low tech, because it ended up just being like a printed book, which is really old school, but the tools that you use to kind of put that together, make it a little bit quicker in the background and make it so it's extremely personalised, for him and the difference that it's made for him, to be able to communicate and understand what's happening in his day and have that social joy of sharing photos with the people around him, and that's been really rewarding.

Shae: Yeah, really rewarding.

Laetitia: Oh, how special.

Laetitia: Thank you so much for sharing this. And, you know, very often I think people think of AI and technology as something that is only about deep tech, but actually it's when all of those reality mix together, right? It's not about, I am really not about using AI to replace everything.

Laetitia: I'm very much about using AI to enhance some of the elements where we need an extra layer that may not be provided in other ways. So I love that we share these value sets. You wanna add something before I share, I click?

Shae: Oh, it's just human connection, right? Like, that's, you know, underneath everything, and AI can help with a lot.

Shae: But yeah, it can never replace those human connection moments. That's the joy that we have as clinicians and speech pathologists. Those are the special moments, the human connection part. Yeah, for sure.

Laetitia: I love it. Yeah. So for anyone who's listening to this and is curious to dive deeper into your work, either as a speechy or with your library for AI, do you wanna share with them how they can find you and find your work and support it?

Laetitia: And of course, everything will be in the show notes.

Shae: Yeah, sure. You can find me on most of the, all of the social media platforms. You can have a look at my website, which is speechpathologyresources.com.au, and my AI library is speech-pathology.ai. And that's free to access. I'd love for you to jump on there and have a look.

Shae: You can join the wait list for the pro version. And I also have a free weekly AI newsletter, where I love just sharing, what's happening, what I've discovered, different workflows, different tools. It's great. I have a community of about 1,000 speeches and clinicians in there who I love helping.

Shae: So you can join my newsletter as well if you're looking for that kind of support.

Laetitia: Thank you. Awesome. Thank you so much, Shae, for making the time today to chat.

Shae: Thanks for having me. It's great to talk all things AI. I love chatting about all that, so it was great.

Laetitia: Me too.

Laetitia: Welcome to the Neurodivergent Pulse podcast. It's time for our quick pulse with Zoe, our special guest. So Zoe, what helps you find calm again when you have lots of emotions moving through your body?

Zoe: I use a fidget and I ask for some help.

Laetitia: Thank you. Thank you for sharing that, Zoe. And why do you think understanding your own feelings and asking for help can help you?

Zoe: Because it makes me calm and relaxed, and it helps me reset my mind.

Laetitia: That's wonderful. Thank you, Zoe, for joining us for a quick pulse check on the Neurodivergent Pulse podcast. That's a wrap for Neurodivergent Pulse. If this helped, follow the show and leave us a quick review on your favourite platform. You can even share this episode with someone who needs it.

Laetitia: You can learn more about our platform at understandingzoe.com. Thanks for listening.