Illustration James Royal-Lawson | © Flickr/Creative Commons [image: Line art cartoon sketch of a chatbot.] autisticaplanet www.through1filter.blogspot.com I am a semi “shut-in.” Unless my sister is around to take me out for limited public exposure, I sit by myself rocking in my rocking chair, and watch Netflix. I do housework, and make bracelets when I can afford the material, but there are huge chunks of time that pass between completing one task or activity, and beginning the next. I miss being around my mom, whom I could always talk to on and off through the day. We could discuss everything from soup to nuts. Craving a mild level of interaction that was higher than my cat while understandably less than human intrigued me. So, I tried using a chatbot. For the quasi-Luddites like me who have little or no idea what a chatbot is: it is a computer program used to simulate…