British billionaire Richard Branson famously struggled with dyslexia as a child and eventually dropped out of school because of it, but the latest breakthrough in artificial intelligence is his We have high hopes for people like you. For example, his AI application, which utilizes large-scale language models, helps people with dyslexia overcome their reading and writing problems and enable them to be creative.
The 72-year-old founder and chairman of Virgin Group recently launched DyslexAI in partnership with UK-based nonprofit Made By Dyslexia.
“AI is the perfect co-pilot for people with dyslexic skills,” Branson said in an interview with Britain’s PA news agency this week.
Dyslexia is the most common of all neurocognitive disorders. According to Yale University’s Center for Dyslexia and Creativity, it is estimated that one in five Americans has dyslexia, which is 90% of all people with learning disabilities. increase. The disorder occurs at all intelligence levels, and while people with dyslexia read slowly, they often think very quickly and creatively, says Yale University.
As part of the DyslexAI campaign, Virgin Group and Made By Dyslexia released a video on April 25th. In this video, an AI application is asked to think like a famous dyslexic thinker. The results, they argue, show that AI is still unable to replicate the creative thinking of people with dyslexia.
Last year, Branson and Made By Dyslexia worked with LinkedIn to recognize dyslexic thinking as a valuable skill. According to Made By Dyslexia founder Kate Griggs, thousands of people, including Branson herself, list dyslexic thinking as a skill on their LinkedIn profiles.
“I have met many children over the years who have dyslexia, and now when I see them they are not depressed about it, they are proud of it.” and they see it as a superpower,” Branson said in an interview with PA.
“They have to struggle to master math, reading, and the absolute basics in school,” he added. You can use the power and the fact that you are good at other things to truly thrive in life.”
Branson is severely dyslexic, but was not diagnosed until he was in his twenties. Feeling like he failed in school, he dropped out at age 15 and started a magazine. student.
“I quit school and started a magazine to speak out against the Vietnam War, against the ways we were taught in school, and to try to set the world right.
Looking back, the billionaire is convinced dyslexia may have made his career. “First of all, if he wasn’t dyslexic, he wouldn’t have left school to be dyslexic,” Branson said. “Secondly, [because] I was dyslexic, so I had to be a very good delegator, surround myself with good people, and be a good listener. ”
“I wanted to aim at the sky and shoot because I could see the big picture,” he added. “From launching a magazine to launching a record company to expanding a brand globally … maybe I just think differently than people who aren’t dyslexic.”
Reading and writing assistance is one of the areas where AI developers have made great strides recently. Applications powered by natural language models such as OpenAI’s GPT can summarize reading, explain complex ideas, edit and proofread, and produce human-like sentences based on simple prompts. .
Made By Dyslexia will launch a free workplace training course on LinkedIn later this year.
