Ideas · Framework · 2025-11-20
The Neurodivergent Advantage in AI
Here's something I rarely discuss publicly: I'm autistic. I found out in my late thirties — I went looking for one explanation and came back with a bigger one.
It reframed twenty years of work, including the thing I'd always assumed was just a quirk. I can't visualize. When someone says "imagine a ball bouncing on a table," I see nothing. Just darkness. Every facilitator who ever said "picture yourself succeeding" was talking to someone else.
That shaped how I direct. I couldn't pre-block a scene in my head, so I built a different method: listen more, decide in the moment. What looked like a limitation became a practice.
And here's the strange gift of this moment. I can't see images in my head, but I can describe what I'm thinking and have it rendered instantly. The thing my brain doesn't do, the technology does. That isn't replacing my intelligence — it's extending it.
The traits that made traditional corporate environments hard — noticing patterns nobody asked about, refusing "the way we've always done it" — are the ones this moment rewards.
Be careful with the numbers here, because this field is full of statistics that get repeated without a source. The firmest official figure is from the UK Office for National Statistics: only about 22% of autistic adults are in any employment, the widest gap of any disability group. Not because the work can't be done, but because the system was built for one kind of mind and quietly filters out the rest.
And when the conditions are designed properly, Harvard Business Review documented measured productivity and quality gains at HPE and JPMorgan Chase.
That isn't a charity argument. It's a waste argument.