Despite innovations that make it easier for seniors to keep living on their own rather than moving into special facilities, most elderly people eventually need a hand with chores and other everyday activities.
Friends and relatives often can't do all the work. Growing evidence indicates it's neither sustainable nor healthy for seniors or their loved ones. Yet demand for professional caregivers already far outstrips supply, and experts say this workforce shortage will only get worse.
So how will our society bridge this elder-care gap? In a word, robots.
Just as automation has begun to do jobs previously seen as uniquely suited for humans, like retrieving goods from warehouses, robots will assist your elderly relatives.
Would you entrust grandma to Johnny 5?
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Tuesday August 29 2017, @04:32PM
It's all relative. If care-giving is one of those areas where actual human touch makes a demonstrable difference then it should, logically, be one of the last occupations to be done by robots, in which case there won't _be_ any other kinds of work, so then (1) applies, (2) applies because there aren't any other fields and (3) applies because there aren't any other fields to leave this one for.
Also not sure about the "massive profits" in care home sector, where I am it is reckoned to be the only industry sector where insolvencies have risen over the past few years (and certainly not a sector I would invest in at the moment - but then most of my investments are duds so what do I know), source: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/05/social-care-crisis-record-number-of-uk-homes-declared-insolvent [theguardian.com]