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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: 1) by crafoo on Tuesday August 29 2017, @04:46PM
More to the point, correcting the shortage of workers in this field is not something anyone cares about, really. Companies will go bankrupt and fold before they offer higher salaries. The entire industry will collapse and a new, more vile, even more cut-throat system will rise to take its place before wages are allowed to increase. C-levels would rather sacrifice quality of care, average life expectancy, lobby for mandatory EoL killbots, and invest in Soylent factories before increasing wages benefits.
Increasing wages, benefits, and improving work conditions means lower quarterly profits for at least a few quarters. You might as well just ask them to cut off their own balls. Never going to happen. Never ever.