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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: 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.