CDS x ACM History Committee Lecture Series

CDS x ACM History Committee Lecture Series

The NYU Center for Disability Studies is partnering with the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) History Committee on an annual lecture series about disability and the history of computing. Our spring 2026 event features Professor Jeff Nagy (York University) presenting on “Big Blue: Computing Depression from the DSM to AI Psychodiagnostics.

An avatar of a clinician sitting on a purple velvet arm chair, with her hands on top of each other over her lap, looking directly into your soul. To her right, there is a white image against the grey wall--almost as if it's an artwork, which says "Top Phrases" in the header of a table, with the body being "i went to my whole sometimes i i'm so sorry to scare you to have it my son was it wasn't". Below it, there is more text, "Table 6: Example phrases that strongly contributed to a user's depression classification on the RSDD dataset.”
Big Blue: Computing Depression from the DSM to AI Psychodiagnostics with Jeff Nagy and Whit Pow (Spring 2026)

The Center for Disability Studies (CDS) and The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) History Committee are hosting an event with Jeff Nagy in conversation with Whit Pow, who will examine the remaking of psychiatric disability in an AI era through the case of algorithmic depression diagnostics. Depression diagnosis and treatment have long been targets for computation, from early patient tracking systems to cognitive behavioral therapy software. But what happens to the political economy of diagnosis in the scalar shift from clinic to platform, and in the concomitant translation from diagnostic criteria to machine learning features? What can we learn about an emergent technopolitics of depression by examining these systems and the datasets they depend on? This talk takes up these questions, leveraging a database of three decades of attempts to bring AI to bear on depression diagnosis.

Moderated by Mara Mills.

NYU Center for Disability Studies logo. The letters C D S are formed of a stroke of equal width tapering to one side at the ends. The C and the S connect underneath the D, making it appear elevated or supported. The C and S are in the Alt Text as Poetry blue and the D is Derek Jarman blue.
The Association for Computing Machinery History Committee logo. In light blue text, the letters "acm" replace the left corner of a diamond in a light blue type. The top and bottom of the diamond are the same shade. The right side of the diamond is a darker blue, and points to the text "History Committee," also in the darker blue type.
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