No Disassemble 7: The Bridge

Or: I Once Met a Student Whose Mind I Almost Never Got to Meet. Communication Technology Introduced Us.

By Kevin Tilsner

July 6, 2026

I thought I was there to help.

Looking back, I think I was the one getting the education.

Years ago, I worked as a substitute instructional assistant for the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit. I wasn’t a certified teacher. I traveled from classroom to classroom, helping wherever I was needed, trying not to accidentally break anything, including myself.

One day I was assigned to work with a student who relied upon a wheelchair and an eye tracking communication device.

At first, it felt like a normal day.

The student answered questions on the digital communication board during class. Participated. Laughed. Learned. Communicated. I already knew there was a thoughtful person there.

What I didn’t yet understand was the depth of the person I was meeting.

About a month later I was assigned to the same classroom again.

I arrived early and waited next door while the teachers came in. Another teacher and I started talking. We chatted for a few minutes and then, almost like a throwaway comment, the teacher said something that would quietly change the way I saw the world.

“People project onto people with disabilities all the time.”

I remember thinking, “Huh… that’s interesting.”

Then I walked into the classroom.

Honestly, I almost forgot the conversation.

The classroom teacher arrived a little late because they had just attended a funeral.

You didn’t have to ask.

Grief has a way of introducing itself before words do.

Everyone quietly settled back into the rhythm of the morning.

Then the student looked directly at the teacher.

The communication device spoke one word.

“Sad.”

The teacher smiled gently.

“Oh… are you sad?”

It was a completely understandable question.

On another day, I might have asked exactly the same thing.

Then that almost-forgotten sentence from the hallway came rushing back.

People project onto people with disabilities all the time.

Projection.

The teacher wasn’t being uncaring.

The teacher was doing something profoundly human.

Interpreting the student’s words through the lens of their own emotional state.

I looked back at the student.

The student’s attention wasn’t turned inward.

It was fixed on the teacher.

Quietly, almost without thinking, I said, “I think the student is talking about you.”

The student immediately confirmed it.

“Yes.”

Everything shifted.

Not because I suddenly realized there was a person there.

I already knew that.

The student had been answering questions and participating all along.

What changed was my understanding of the depth of the person I was meeting.

Until that moment I had mostly thought of the communication device as a way to answer classroom questions.

Now it became a window.

The student wasn’t simply responding to the world.

The student was observing it.

Reading it.

Understanding it.

Recognizing another person’s grief before I had.

The communication technology hadn’t created compassion.

It hadn’t created empathy.

It hadn’t created emotional intelligence.

Those things were already there.

It simply gave the rest of us a way to finally hear them.

That moment has stayed with me for years.

Funny thing about projection.

Once someone points it out, you start seeing it everywhere.

Especially in yourself.

Years later I started using generative AI.

Not because I had run out of ideas.

Quite the opposite.

I’m autistic.

Ideas have never been my problem.

Sometimes my brain feels like twenty people trying to squeeze through one doorway at the same time.

Connections arrive before sentences.

Paragraphs show up out of order.

Stories braid themselves together before I’ve figured out where they begin.

If you’ve ever listened to me tell a story in person, you’ll know my brain enjoys taking the scenic route.

ChatGPT didn’t invent my destination.

It mostly helped me stop taking unnecessary exits.

Anyone who’s ever been trapped in one of my stories knows that’s no small accomplishment.

It became something I never expected.

A cognitive prosthetic.

It didn’t think for me.

It helped me express thoughts that were already mine.

It helped me organize ideas that already existed.

It helped my intention survive the journey from my mind into yours.

As I was writing this essay, something quietly funny happened.

The essay became an example of itself.

I told ChatGPT this story.

Not because it knew it.

It didn’t.

I lived it.

The memories are mine.

The emotions are mine.

The lesson is mine.

At one point I started talking about artists who paint with their feet and imagined people with even fewer physical ways to create.

I knew exactly what I meant.

My wording didn’t.

ChatGPT pointed out that someone could misunderstand my intention.

So we rewrote it.

Not because my idea was wrong.

Because my words hadn’t quite caught up to my idea.

That wasn’t replacement.

It was refinement.

Not authorship.

Translation.

The technology wasn’t replacing my thinking.

It was helping my thinking arrive more faithfully.

Then I laughed.

This entire essay had quietly become an example of what it was trying to explain.

That’s when I realized this isn’t really an essay about AI.

It’s an essay about recognition.

Years ago another teacher warned me that people project onto people with disabilities.

At the time I thought it was an observation about one classroom.

Now I think it was an observation about all of us.

We project onto people.

We project onto disabilities.

We project onto technologies.

Sometimes we stare at the interface so intensely that we stop looking for the human being behind it.

I almost did.

The classroom teacher almost did.

Now I wonder how often we do it with people who use AI.

How many times have we looked at the tool and stopped looking for the person?

How many times have we mistaken assistance for absence?

How many times have we confused the bridge with the person crossing it?

Most criticism of AI-generated content is aimed at mass-produced spam, deceptive content, or systems that exploit artists and writers.

I understand that.

Those are real concerns.

My concern begins when that same dismissal gets applied to every AI-assisted work without stopping to ask who is using the tool and why.

Because some of the people using these tools aren’t replacing their minds.

They’re finally able to share them.

For generations remarkable people have found extraordinary ways to create.

Some paint with their feet.

Some paint with their mouths.

Some compose music with eye tracking devices.

Some write through speech synthesis.

Human creativity has never been the fragile part of the equation.

The interface has.

Generative AI is another interface.

For some people it’s convenience.

For others it’s access.

For others it’s independence.

For others it’s dignity.

When we casually dismiss someone’s work with two easy words, who are we actually dismissing?

An automated content farm?

Or an autistic writer finally able to untangle years of thoughts?

The student whose voice reaches us through an eye tracking device?

The artist who cannot hold a brush?

The person whose imagination has always been larger than the body’s ability to express it?

Those people exist.

I almost failed to recognize one.

I don’t want to make that mistake again.

The first time I witnessed that projection, it happened in a classroom.

Now, it happens on the internet, daily. 

The only real difference was the interface.

I once met a student whose mind I almost never got to meet.

Communication technology introduced us.

You almost didn’t meet mine, either.

Generative AI introduced us too.

And that’s why one image keeps coming back to me.

I know it’s a strong image.

I also know I can’t shake it.

After what I experienced in that classroom, this is honestly what it feels like.

It feels like walking up to someone who relies upon a wheelchair, taking it away, and then dancing around them because you’ve “saved” them from using it.

Because for some people, these tools aren’t shortcuts.

They’re freedom.

Before we decide which bridges humanity should burn, maybe we should make sure we’ve met everyone who’s still trying to cross them.

Accessibility changes lives:

https://www.jadensvoice.org