Dr Caroline Emmer De Albuquerque Green , Director of Research at the Institute for Ethics in AI , explores the role of AI and robots in the future of long-term care.
Dr Caroline Emmer De Albuquerque Green, Institute for Ethics in AIImagine a world in which a humanoid robot cares for you when you need help and support with daily activities.
This robot would not only take on mundane tasks like cooking or cleaning, but also be your conversational partner and help you with maintaining your personal hygiene etc.
This idea of robots as caregivers - 'carebots' - especially for older people, is a recurring theme in mainstream media and not without controversy . There is excitement around the idea as we are facing a shortage of care workers and rising demands for care in the light of demographic ageing .
The hope is that these carebots can make caring more effective and efficient and of course improve people's quality of life and care - some people may quite like the idea of having a robot take on tasks, like supporting with washing and dressing.
Could carebots replace human care?
There are concerns that increasing reliance on 'carebots' will replace human care or at least worsen human relationships. Other concerns relate to the safety of such robots, the financial implications on individuals and simply whether they can make good on what they promise to deliver.
Studies from Japan have shown low social acceptance of carebots due to issues like lack of trust in the providers of technology and how they handle personal data .
The familiar media narrative about the carebot is really one aspect of a much larger and very necessary conversation around the future we envision for social care provision and technology.
Tech enthusiasts commonly respond that carebots are not intended to replace human care, but that people may choose to chat to a robot about many topics and that this is to be preferred over people being lonely. Other responses conclude that robots are still evolving and improving, that they will be safe and much more affordable than they are now.
What is the future we envision for social care?
First, the familiar media narrative about the carebot is really one aspect of a much larger and very necessary conversation around the future we envision for social care provision and technology.
It is this conversation - who leads it, frames it and how it may be limited - that should concern us.
Technology, after all, in many different forms already is an essential component in the caregiving ecosystem, and its role will likely increase.
As new technologies such as carebots evolve, they may become 'care collaborators', but they will be merely one technological component of what makes up our caregiving and care receiving experience.
As new technologies such as carebots evolve, they may become 'care collaborators', but they will be merely one technological component of what makes up our caregiving and care receiving experience.
We should therefore not limit the conversation by focusing on the benefits and risks of a particularly interesting technology - like a carebot - but continue to forefront the value of social care in people's lives, a vision of what 'good quality of life' with care for people of any age entails and how technology can and should support this.
We must continue to invest in our care workers
The conversation needs to be centred around the meaningful engagement of people receiving care and caregivers, and accompanied by the development of frameworks for implementation and evaluation.
Importantly, we need continued investment in the recognition and training of care workers and family caregivers, who will be the people deploying these systems: it will be they who bear witness to the benefits, risks and harms of technology in care environments and for this reason they need to know what to look out for.
We need continued investment in the recognition and training of care workers and family caregivers, who will be the people deploying these systems: it will be they who bear witness to the benefits, risks and harms of technology in care environments and for this reason they need to know what to look out for.
Addressing concerns around new technology in social care
However, we should not dismiss concerns regarding 'carebots' and other technologies in care. Rather, we must listen to, investigate, and respond to them.
These concerns can teach us about what people care about and must inform the trajectory of AI and technology in social care to build care ecosystems that work for people. This is essential to increase the likelihood of social acceptance of carebots and other technology in caregiving.
For example, collaborators in our Oxford Project on Generative AI in Social Care, particularly careworkers and people receiving social care, also expressed a fear over how AI and technology will impact social care as a profession: care workers are worried about losing their jobs because of AI, just like other people in many sectors.
They also worry that more AI and technology will mean worse pay and working conditions for them, with many expected to use their own phones to access AI systems, heavier workloads and more unpaid hours spent needing to train to stay up to date with the latest tech.
People receiving care want positive human interaction, and while a chatty carebot may be entertaining or even a good conversational partner, being able to access compassionate human support is crucial.
People receiving care want positive human interaction, and while a chatty carebot may be entertaining or even a good conversational partner, being able to access compassionate human support is crucial. This access may be at stake if policy makers and care providers consider technology as the answer to a shortage of carers, pressures on family caregivers and an epidemic of loneliness, without investment in access to human support at the same time.
People value having control over their lives
Also, people value having choice and control over their lives, including the technology that is part of it. It is easy to imagine a future, in which technology - like a carebot - is placed into someone's home, but this technology is not effective in providing the support that the individual needs, is constantly broken or is out of date.
The hope would be that a person has access to a multiplicity of kinds of human and technological support to live their lives to the fullest, but for this to happen we need to work on a care ecosystem in which a carebot is just one part of the story.
The hope would be that a person has access to a multiplicity of kinds of human and technological support to live their lives to the fullest, but for this to happen we need to work on a care ecosystem in which a carebot is just one part of the story.
The broad concern expressed about human replacement by carebots is therefore much more nuanced than it sounds in media reporting.
Many of these nuances have little to do with the technology per se, but with what people value and how carebots impact on peoples' lives, how we frame and who drives the conversation on tech in care.
