The paper discusses both artificial intelligence (AI)’s potential in assistive technology and to improve accessibility and its use in control and surveillance and the disadvantages to disabled people from the bias in AI algorithms. This makes the involvement of disabled people in AI research particularly important, but a lack of literature in this area was found. There is some literature on equity, diversity and inclusion in AI, with gender the main characteristic investigated and very limited reference to disability, and a few papers on AI co-design research with non-academic disabled researchers. There is also some work on making computer science education more accessible to disabled students. Several approaches to designing databases to avoid digital discrimination against disabled people were also identified. The work highlights the importance of disabled researchers being involved in the development of new technologies, particularly where there is potential for discriminatory impacts, as well as in assistive technology development. It also highlights the need for empirical research on disabled researchers in AI and other technical areas.