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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: 4, Interesting) by donkeyhotay on Tuesday August 29 2017, @07:10PM (2 children)
I'm within about 12 years of retirement age. I would actually prefer a robot for a lot of tasks, provided it is reliable. That's the only problem with tech. It seems like everything I encounter is broken or unreliable in some way. For instance, I just installed a couple of z-wave lights about three weeks ago. They frequently lose their pairing with the hub. Getting them re-paired hardly ever works. In desperation I leave them alone, and then sometimes, they just start working again after six or seven hours. Fine, but I would prefer for them to be back online a bit more immediately. The z-wave smoke alarm never re-pairs. I've given up on it altogether. I only have three IOT devices in my home and they are a complete pain in the ass. I can't imagine having a whole house full of these things. The security cameras also seem pretty finicky.
In general, anything tech-related strikes me as unnecessarily unreliable and prone to breakdown. I've watched friends spend over an hour trying to get a bluetooth speaker to connect to a smart phone just to listen to music. Samsung's gaff with their TV's getting bricked after a software update is another recent example.
But if they can make robots that do what they're supposed to do, reliably. I'm all in favor of having one around to do chores.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Wednesday August 30 2017, @09:12PM (1 child)
Under the right conditions, I might prefer robots too. On first glance, it seemed like a good idea. Then I think about Internet 2.0, the sad state of GUIs on the major three OSs, IoT being shoved down our throats, monopolistic Internet and cable companies, and so on and so on and so on. A large percent of the articles on Soylent News deal with stupid crap that goes on that shouldn't. Stupid crap that's obvious to us, but not the general public. (And the powers that be don't want to change it.)
Not only are my in-laws are in a home and my folks aren't far away from it, but I get to see it in two different countries. Right now, senior homes in both places suck for all the reasons listed here and more. It's all 100% human and there's a lot of room for improvement. Seniors are routinely ignored and their medications are screwed up. What I'm concerned about is that adding a layer of robots will shove the concerns of seniors more into a hidden area. That will cause their lives to become worse.
As with anything, robots are a tool. They can be good or bad or both. At this point, I'm not in favor of robots simply because when my wife and I had to yell at someone over the poor treatment my in-laws were receiving, we could at least yell at someone and threaten to go to authorities. When robots become fully integrated, we may not have that option anymore. Of course, that won't be a concern for my in-laws because they'll be long gone. But who will be able to yell for us when we need it? Example? Think about automated phone systems when you call up a company for help. Is the automation helpful or a hinderence? Who does it really benefit?
Just something to think about.
(Score: 2) by donkeyhotay on Friday September 01 2017, @07:42PM
Yes, automated phone systems are a perfect example. A friend and I were having a conversation the other day about technology and the subject got to self-driving cars. I made the comment, "self-driving cars will do for our roads what automated phone systems have done for customer service." He accused me of being a get-off-my-lawn old man. Where he sees this utopia of fewer traffic accidents and more productivity, I see being trapped in an uncomfortable box for an extended period of time while ads are being blared at me. There is a negative side to technology, especially any technology that you don't own or have control over.