Anna Williams

University of Florida, Purdue University West Lafayette

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Total Citations

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About

Anna Williams is a critical scholar at the intersection of robotics, disability studies, and race-critical code studies. Her work fundamentally challenges how we conceptualize human-like AI, arguing that robots are framed through a deficit lens—what she calls "All Robots Are Disabled" (2023, 3 citations)—and that this framing mirrors societal dehumanization of marginalized communities. In her most-cited paper, "I, Misfit" (2021, 12 citations), she applies an oppositional reading to applied robotics in autism intervention, exposing how roboticists legitimize their creations through care work while ignoring the perspectives of neurodivergent people. Her 2025 work, "I Hadn't Thought About That," (4 citations) directly engages creators of human-like AI on ethics and neurodivergence, revealing blind spots in how humanness is defined. Even her earlier work on "Human Trust Factors in Image Analysis" (2018, 5 citations) demonstrates a consistent thread: questioning who gets to trust, and who is trusted, in human-machine systems. Though her citation counts are modest, Williams’s impact is profound—she is a leading voice in critical AI studies, forcing the field to confront its ableist and racist assumptions. Her work is essential reading for anyone designing or studying human-like AI, offering a necessary corrective to techno-optimism.