Could AI Become Neurodivergent?: Disfluent Conversations with Natural Language Processors Available to Purchase

AI conversational agents become the catalyst in this chapter for an examination of natural language processing (NLP). NLP has a long history in machine learning, but less attention has been given to its incorporation of disfluent speech elements in fashioning naturalistic speech. In the quest to make artificial agents speak and interact seamlessly, disfluencies such as “um” and “ah” play a crucial role while simultaneously being pathologized as “disfluent.”