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THE SJ CHILDS SHOW-Building a Community of Inclusion
🎙️ Welcome to The SJ Childs Show Podcast! 🎉
Join Sara Bradford—better known as SJ Childs—as she bridges understanding and advocacy for the neurodivergent community. This podcast shines a light on autism awareness, empowering stories, expert insights, and practical resources for parents, educators, and individuals alike.
Brought to you by The SJ Childs Global Network, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting autistic individuals and their families worldwide, this show is your weekly dose of inspiration and actionable ideas. Visit sjchilds.org to learn more about our mission, find resources, and connect with our growing community.
Catch us on platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Goodpods—or tune in Fridays at 8:30 AM EDT on the Helium Radio Network’s Life Improvement Radio (Channel 1). Together, let’s foster a brighter, more inclusive world! 🌟
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THE SJ CHILDS SHOW-Building a Community of Inclusion
Episode 321-AI for Autistics: Empowering Individuals Through Technology with Derek Crager
What happens when artificial intelligence meets neurodivergent thinking? Magic, innovation, and life-changing tools for those who've always felt different.
Meet Derek Crager, a late-diagnosed autistic entrepreneur who spent decades feeling like "an alien here on Earth to observe" before discovering his neurotype at age 50. Now he's channeling his unique perspective into creating AI solutions specifically designed for the neurodivergent community.
Derek's journey from industrial construction worker to the creator of Amazon's highest-rated employee training program reveals how differently-wired brains can excel when given the right opportunities. Through his nonprofit "AI for Autistics," he's teaching non-programmers how to harness artificial intelligence to build websites, apps, and even launch their own businesses – all without writing a single line of code.
The conversation explores Derek's groundbreaking "Pocket Mentor" system, which transforms complex knowledge bases into accessible phone conversations. Imagine having 24/7 access to specialized autism support or workplace guidance through a simple phone call – no apps, internet connection, or technical skills required. For neurodivergent individuals who struggle with traditional employment, these tools create judgment-free spaces to ask questions that might otherwise lead to misunderstandings.
What makes Derek's approach revolutionary is his focus on knowledge accessibility as the key to true empowerment. "I'm looking at filling the knowledge gap," he explains, revealing how AI can transform lives when designed through a neurodivergent lens.
Whether you're autistic, support someone on the spectrum, or simply interested in how technology can create more inclusive spaces, this episode offers fresh perspectives on harnessing AI to amplify human potential. As Derek puts it: "Don't be scared of AI... it's about empowering the individual to make them irreplaceable."
Visit practicalai.app to connect with Derek's community and discover resources for neurodivergent individuals interested in exploring AI.
The SJ Child Show is Backford's 13th season. Join Sarah Bradford and the SJ Child Show team as they explore the world of autism and share stories of hope and inspiration. This season we're excited to bring you more autism summits featuring experts and advocates from around the world. Go to sjchildsorg to donate and to get more information. Congratulations on 2024's 20,000 downloads and 300 episodes.
Speaker 2:Hi, welcome today to the SJ Child Show. It's so nice to be here. I have a wonderful guest to bring you today. We're going to have a really informative and engaging conversation. You guys are going to love this. I just know it. So yeah, tune in. This is Derek Crager. Hopefully I pronounced that right. I'm very phonetic. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 3:No, it's all good, sarah, thank you. And with a name like Derek, I grew up not knowing who I was, because when I'd introduce myself, especially in a noisy environment, they'd say Eric, darren, daryl, and then a lot of times they just go Craig.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow. So yeah, you've been through that. That's interesting and for me and this is something that we'll definitely touch on more and really dive deep but I have outer ear microtia, I have these little ears, and so guess what people called me Little ears? And I was known for my physical feature of my most embarrassing and not wanting to everyone to pay attention to feature. And isn't that interesting that we kind of get labeled and tied into these ideas of other people and how they perceive us and then we really hold onto some of those things and attach those things to ourselves when we're little and I know that you are a late diagnosed autistic ADHD, just like myself.
Speaker 2:So, having that kind of introspection to go back and look and say all of those years I felt so different from everyone else, like, I say, like a unicorn in, like a horse pasture, and I thought it was because of this physical difference that I had. You know that little did I know it was my brain, my thinking, the way people, my aura, maybe who knows right, is that affected by it? So, yeah, I think it's really we have to kind of give grace to that time, that era of our lives, where we just kind of held on to those things. Held on to those things and hopefully, like you and I, when we were able to perceive things from a different vantage point, we could kind of do away with those ideas and realize we were, we are who we are, that we know we are now, you know, kind of a thing. Well, that wasn't too deep and confusing, but not for you, I know that. So tell us about your experience, introduce yourself, and then we'll dive deep into this conversation.
Speaker 3:Well, thanks, sarah, that whole do I know who I am? And I told my wife just last week. I said I feel like an adult for the first time. And she says well, what do you mean? And I said, well, I feel like I'm doing adult things. And I said, well, I feel like I'm doing adult things. And my realization of late was that I think, for the first time in my life, I feel I do know who I am.
Speaker 3:It took me 50, some years to get here, but growing up, being different right, for want of the multiple words that are out there that we define ourselves and others define us as but being different and then having truly having a name like Derek, I think our names do define ourselves. I think it's important to have understanding, when we name a child, the impact that name has. And I think part of the that rug being pulled out from underneath my feet while I'm trying just to exist in life, which is hard enough, was that you know who am I. You know, am I Derek, eric, darren? And then I still get this Craig, even after I speak with somebody, and I send an email and they reply back. They say thanks, craig, which I just assume is right, the last part of my name is Craig.
Speaker 3:Anyway, I did grow up different. I always, you know, felt that I envied the school children that had friends, and I lived out in the country, so that made my travel a little bit. In our neighborhood was uh four miles to go around our square and each one of us had about five acres that we grew up on and I was able to, um, do a lot of stuff outside. You know, woods and uh creek nearby, um, but I never really had a friend. I think I had uh one person for about two years until he moved away, roger Decker, to Florida, and I was left here in Indiana. But I always felt like I was doing something wrong. Do I just not understand? Do I not get jokes? And so I really truly felt like an alien that was just here on Earth to observe, and I've heard other people say that.
Speaker 3:So after high school I went to college because that's what we're supposed to do and nobody else in my family had ever gone to college and I didn't know why I was going to college, but I was on my own, so I had to, had to pay my bills and eat. So I ended up getting a job and worked through an apprenticeship. Apprenticeship is a skilled trade position that takes four years to go through, so it's on the job training. There are some headlines that you see from time to time. You know why go to college and come out and make a minimum wage when you can go through a four year apprenticeship and come out and make it one hundred one hundred twenty thousand dollars a year?
Speaker 3:So back then I it was really that I mean for a turn of a phrase, a man's, man's world type of thing, and being different was not a friend to me. So I think I learned quickly and adapted quickly and my entire life I'm still at this role of it feels not natural to have a friend, so to speak. So I think I've built all these subroutines in my life to, in this situation, do this in this situation do that.
Speaker 3:But to zoom to where I'm at today, sarah, I did industrial construction for quite a while, worked with US automotive manufacturers for about 15 years. I ended up being a serial entrepreneur, which, when anybody uses the term entrepreneur, I do.
Speaker 2:I do, I see serial entrepreneur.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, I don't know if anybody else says that. Darren, we're doing it. I'm crazy, right now I literally.
Speaker 3:I never said successful.
Speaker 2:That's okay. Serial entrepreneur a hundred percent. And you know what that means. I know what that means, I live it. I live that.
Speaker 3:Well, sarah, for me it was. I was just trying to buy friends. I really think so.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I do something neat and I'd invite people to the party and and uh, and sometimes it worked out and, honestly, on several times it did not. But uh, um, I did end up building a largest business of its type back from 2000 to 2010. Um, and then I went back in employment. I worked automotive and food manufacturing for a bit, ended up going from working with my hands to being an engineer, and then process engineer and then learning and I finished up. I left Amazon last year after half a decade and I was on their you, oh, they call RME Reliability, maintenance and Engineering team on their learning team.
Speaker 3:So I built Amazon's highest rated employee training program in Amazon Global History and I really, truly believe that it's because I understand people better than most do, because I was put behind that proverbial eight ball so many times in my life. I anticipate that cringe and I really built the training on communication and understanding of each other. You know, building a bridge of trust and respect is what I called it. So that was through last year and then and now here I am. Now I'm just kind of doing my own thing again. You know that entrepreneur business mindset.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. Oh yeah, that I sometimes say that I'm just a Jane of all things because I've done so many different careers a, you know, forever child, if you will then I knew that I needed to make connections somehow, because that's like, in fact, my husband just said it to someone yesterday my wife is like a people collector. She collects people and friends and connections and I like that. I thought that was really cute that he said that, because I want people to have better opportunities and I see, through the connection of people, how that can happen and so I love to put that into work, you know, and see the spark happen like that and I think that kind of like you said, even going through all of those different trades, you really learn how to assess all of the types of people around you and I can completely appreciate and understand that. And now that you are kind of on this other side of it all, what goals would are you going to be working on next, like what's next for you in the upcoming time?
Speaker 3:well, I, uh, I think, uh, my life leading up to uh diagnosis, uh, eight years ago, when I was 50, it was all about trying to find myself and trying to put up guards or defenses uh, to protect myself. So I was always reactive and, tying into that, I feel like an adult. For the first time in my life, I feel like I'm doing something more proactive. Someone asked me this morning if there's one word that would describe your life you'd want to leave here when you're gone. What would it be? And I said teacher. And I didn AI. Today, I'm not an AI company and I, we we kind of have a laugh because those that actually are using AI to build something, we don't call ourselves an AI company. I mean, ai is just a tool and those people are just doing that. I'm an AI company. Well, are you really? You know, it sounds like you're just focused on the buzzword rather than a process or a product, so a nonprofit that I have AI for Artistics it's at no cost, anybody that wants to attend.
Speaker 3:We talk about how to use AI to really create their own business. Use AI for non-programmers to write programs and mobile apps and websites and our people is how I refer. I think a lot of us do. Our people don't have stellar, stellar reputations for working a job and staying in a job a long time a union job, where I would have been pushed out much sooner if it wasn't a union role. Beyond that, if I got two or three years at a business, it felt like a long time. So what I'm doing today and moving forward, it's all about filling the knowledge gap. It's all about filling the knowledge gap. I've built a cool tool. I think, that if we want to sound like really out there, it allows anybody to tap into the Akashic records.
Speaker 2:Oh really oh we are going deeper today. Oh, yes, all right, I like this, I like this, wow. And I mean, not a lot of people know what the acoustic records are, so, let's, maybe we don't need to tell them because this isn't that kind of a podcast. But if you want to know now you can do your own research and go find out what that means for yourself. I've had reading, a reading done, so that's fascinating and I love that. And wow, wow, okay, my brain's like going. The little you know brain emoji that's what is it? The little brain explosion emoji just happened. Pardon my stumbling over my words. Now I'm too excited, now I'm fangirling over Derek here.
Speaker 2:I love AI and I use it every day, maybe not every. I use it every time I open my computer. It's. You know, some days when I'm taking a break I might not, but in general, I have found that the access, the time management, the productivity that I've had has been just 800%. You know there's. It's ridiculous how much it has saved me in time in you know, this last event that I had, the second annual International Autism Summit. Excuse me, I spent probably half as much time in having to categorize, organize, schedule, 37 speakers.
Speaker 2:Really, it's hard. It's hard to and I also use it to help me. You know, I ask it maybe like, hey, I have this new plant, what watering, you know, schedule should I use or whatever it is all it's, it's just so ultimately can cover so many areas that I guess executive functioning, like a lot of us, have trouble really managing those types of things, and this can give you such just laid out, step-by-step, easy. When something is too hard, I say break it down. I don't understand what you just said. Give it to me in easy steps, you know. And bam, just gives it to me in easy steps.
Speaker 2:I kind of have a joke with my daughter, my husband, that if AI ever takes over they'll let me like they'll never take over me. I'm like so good friends with them. Now you know they're like we're bringing Sarah with us here. We can. You know she's a part of us. So, yeah, I could have, but I I love that we're using something that is a tool in a positive way that can help structure structure, if you will, structure structure for individuals that have a really hard time otherwise doing so. How do you? Are you getting the information to the folks through the nonprofit, like email or website. What does that look like?
Speaker 3:It's a. I actually shifted platforms earlier this year from Discord, which has its own tools, to a dedicated community, and the community is the way you log in. Everybody has their accounts. I mean you can use your real name or made up name, so I mean we're not tracking anything like that. But there's different rooms with different topics that you can talk in and talk about. But there's different rooms with different topics that you can talk in and talk about, and you can make posts, just like you can on Facebook and LinkedIn and things like that. It just happens to be where, like minded people do it, it's can can.
Speaker 2:I share the domain, please. Oh, I'll make sure to type it up, go ahead.
Speaker 3:So if you want to go right to the community, it's, it's practical AI. Dot APP slash community. So practical AI. There's the phonetics for you. And then dot APP Paul, paul forward slash community. And I think I even tell a little bit of a story on that page before you can click and log in and all that. Oh, that's brilliant. Oh, my gosh, did I get it? Look at that, that's wonderful.
Speaker 2:I like that. I have a legal background, so I got these fast typing skills.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's fantastic. Um, and did I answer your question? Where were we going with this?
Speaker 2:that's okay this is perfect. This is perfect. We just keep going. We move with this show, right? We don't. There's no, there's no boundaries here. Okay, well, there's some, but you know, not in, not in conversations, we would just flow. But yeah, tell us about the community and what happens when people are in there.
Speaker 3:It's like any other platform. It's asynchronous, so you can go in, et cetera. Every now and then I'll do a live I don't know example, you know share my screen and talk through things. It's focused on it's. It's AI, for autistics is the other domain that you can go into, but it's not just a. It's not just a which, by the way, ai, artificial intelligence I do have a dual meaning there, because I look at AI as being an autistic individual, but, that said, I use neurodiverse more than autism or even ASD type of thing.
Speaker 3:There's so many labels out there. I really follow what Dr Nancy Doyle says when she talks about spiky profile and just because we're classified as a group, some of us have focus skills, some of us have high level skills and some of us can zoom up and down and we do different things well, but we don't do everything well. So the community itself is focused around using AI as a tool. So you mentioned how you use AI for a tool with our primary. I've used the word focus a lot. I noticed that I've got a board in the back of my mind. Kathy, you've used focus too many times.
Speaker 2:Isn't that funny. My husband used to make me put it on a board in front of me and like write it on a whiteboard. When I first started podcasting.
Speaker 3:So the goal of what we do is to use technology to teach non-programmers how to program. And I think my record I was presenting to a nonprofit community called Perscalus, which is a they educate people and I said, well, let me try something. So I typed into this prompt. I said create a tic-tac-toe game. And that's all I said. And the AI was smart enough that it did its background and its research and all of a sudden on the screen all these file names started appearing and every time a file name appeared there'd be a window next to it where it was writing code for that file name. So in a matter of about three minutes it created an entire tic-tac-toe game that was available at a dedicated URL and I shared it with the group and we started playing tic-tac-toe like within five minutes, and it was.
Speaker 3:It was just a neat example, but people are doing all kinds of things on programming and programmers are using AI as a tool to like to get past the mundane.
Speaker 3:You know, create so many, the basic file structure, and then myself I don't consider myself a programmer, I'm more of a friendly hacker.
Speaker 3:Going back to the 1980s, I used to write some programs in BASIC and save them on an audio cassette and then put the cassette in an envelope and mail it to Texas Instruments, and for every program that I wrote, they would send back my choice of five programs.
Speaker 3:So basic programming, I couldn't even say I was a basic programmer. But today, using AI and through natural language, you can say things like oh, can you make the background blue instead of red? Can you increase that font size? Can you put together for the business people out there a squeeze page, you know, with these topics, and can you create an about us page? And it just does it just through talking. And one thing that I recommend, and it's a tool that I use every time I ask AI to do something, I always finish it with ask me clarifying questions before proceeding, and that way it allows the AI to understand better what I want it to do, and it's something that doesn't happen in real life. It allows me to rephrase what I want to come across with closer to the goal. Come across with closer to the goal. It's a whole impact, or intent versus impact, which in real life kind of has failed our people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I still say I'm asking clarifying questions. But yeah, it's funny, boy, how did we, how did we not, you know, been friends all this time? We have so much in common, so funny. Oh my gosh, I love those projects and your missions that you're working on. You know there's a huge gap in employment opportunity, a social opportunity for autistics, and being able to create a community for adults is is so important, because there's a zillion, you know, kids programs out there, but when it comes to adults, sometimes it's harder to find those structured programs, and especially for people like programmers that want to speak the same language with one another.
Speaker 2:And I find that so refreshing. And thank you, thank you so much for building a community like that and sharing the information. Like you said, information is such a powerful, powerful thing to want to possess, and we have a quote that we say a little bit of knowledge will turn fear into understanding and it can really help people out, especially to help understand their kiddo, their teenager, their adult autistic and, you know, for parents or service providers that might be listening, this is a great opportunity to share this information with those individuals that will benefit. So please do so, please share this, share this with them. What is kind of your hope for the future of AI, for autistics and the nonprofit, everything? What's your hope moving forward? What do you see like happening? You're really big picture.
Speaker 3:There's a phrase that people like to throw around empowering the individual, but um, uh, the best I've ever seen that actually in use is is by giving somebody the power to make their own choices. All right, but still, if they're making their own choices and there's no judgment, that's huge, but if they don't have the knowledge to make those their own choices. So what I'm looking at is a tool that I have. It's called Pocket Mentor and it's your phone. It sticks in your pocket. It's not an app, I, it's. It's taken AI, leveraging all the good things from AI, filtering out all the barriers, which is like internet access and apps and app permissions and wifi and internet access. So it's just taken an actual telephone number.
Speaker 3:Like when I was in grade school, I used to call the library and listen in to the story of the week and it was a story, right, that was. That was our internet, was listened to audio over a telephone. But I built something that can take a knowledge base, a specific topic, and I'm programming it into a phone number and then now the empowerment that we're giving humans of all ages is the ability to talk to a virtual agent that is knowledgeable, that has the most knowledge in the world on any one topic and it's not a let me call chat GPT and just ask about anything. It's not an Alexa there's limitations to that because it's trying to filter knowledge from the world. So what we do? We take knowledge from the world. So what we do, we? We take knowledge and, for example, I'm there's, there's enterprise business use case that I'm, I'm looking to grow a business wise, but I have a, a doctor, that has a autistic family practice and I'm building out and I'm I'm giving it to her because I think knowledge should be free.
Speaker 2:I love that. Thank you.
Speaker 3:The way it looks like is that I'm taking her training regimen, her guidelines, everything. If you could think about it like training the trainer, like if you're teaching somebody to teach what you do. We do that with AI. We put all this knowledge in a box and then, once we have it in a box, I assign a phone number to it and I put guardrails on it so the AI only speaks from that box and we've got a very friendly supportive and unlike my parents, you know parents grown up patient and so there's voice.
Speaker 3:It sounds human and even though we know it's ai, we acknowledge it's ai. There's this anthropomorphic um experience. It sounds like a human. So when this autistic coach isn't available because her time is limited, she does family every week and there's only so many hours in a day. This encapsulates all her training and it's available 24 hours a day and even though it doesn't respond 100%, and even though it doesn't respond 100%, like the doctor does, it responds at 89% and it fills the gap when it's like 2 am on a Saturday morning, Saturday night, type of thing to ask questions and help get child and parent through the day.
Speaker 3:I'm having a rough time and this is what I see empowerment to the individual, giving them the free choice to make their own decisions, but making sure they have that knowledge that they have, that they need to make a good decision. And it's a singularity point in knowledge. I mean we know that we can type right, type into our phone, our laptop, our computer and get answers, but it takes so long to do this, it takes so long to come back and it doesn't feel like a human, it feels like a computer, but over the phone, hands-free, we just have our earbuds in and you know, I just say you know, call for help, and it dials that knowledge base and it talks the person through and whatever that is.
Speaker 3:And in the employment world our people have tough unemployment because the questions that we ask don't align with questions typical employees do. So it catches the managers and the supervisors and colleagues off base, off guard, because they don't understand why we're asking these questions, because some of them like that's obvious, why don't you know that? And then there's other ones. Oh, that's insightful, but but anyway, it's a way that we can have to go from one size fits all down to a one size fits one trainer. So any employee onboarding experience, they can talk to this telephone and they can walk through and have their private tour onboarding to that company and they have a much higher employment rate after that. They're not at there, they don't feel judged by asking questions because they're talking to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Oh, it's so powerful and and so helpful. And for those of you who don't use it, feel free, Derek, if you don't mind. Do you have socials or emails? People can reach out to you or should they go to the website? Let's help these people find the AI that works best for them and teach the people how to use it, and I think that that's fascinating. And where do you send someone Because I know it's mostly for the programmers and things when would you send kind of the working moms and dads to go start their basic knowledge of AI so that they can start getting on board with that?
Speaker 3:Well, that tool that I just described you can access at practicalaiapp, that same domain that I shared earlier, and I had the community there, which is the nonprofit side. But if you just go back to that root domain, I put as many use cases as possible in there and majority of it is business, because it's a business that I'm running. But there's different use cases for individuals and I have some for schools. It's how to learn after school is out, and I have another post that talks about why education is failing today. We just learn differently and we each learn uniquely. So they can connect with me through that website. They can find me on LinkedIn just by plugging in my name. There's not a lot of Derek Crager's out there.
Speaker 3:But if you have a use case, if I can help you out, if you have a child or a cousin or a brother or sister that wants to learn how to program, go to the community link as well. But my ears are open. I love to communicate with people and help.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, derek. It's been such a great conversation. I knew it would be. I was really looking forward to it. Um yeah, any advice you want to give to everyone for AI, like, give us your big tagline, your AI tagline.
Speaker 3:Well, I'll. I'll say don't be scared of AI and it's and don't worry about you're going to miss it and don't worry that's going to take over your life. Um, the way that AI, the way that I see AI turning in um into is is an empowering the individual to make them irreplaceable.
Speaker 2:I love that. Thank you so much for your work that you're doing in the community and for your time today, and I'd love to have you back on and we can dive deeper. Today we didn't even like talk about your diagnosis and all of those things that you know we would normally talk about. It was just too exciting. But we'll we'll have you back on and we'll we'll go deeper and talk about some more things and maybe by then you'll have done five more apps or something you know things for people. So, yeah, great to have you on and I really look forward to staying in touch.
Speaker 3:Well, sarah, you're wonderful, your show's wonderful, everything that you do is just wonderful. So I appreciate I'm sure everyone in the community appreciates everything that you do. So thank you for having me here and I look forward to the next time we speak.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
