WSJ: Old Age Will Be Different in the Robotic Age
WSJ: Old Age Will Be Different in the Robotic Age
Machines could soon help elders get out of bed, bathe them, even provide them with emotional support.
I always figured this problem would be solved by the Japanese inventing competent Elder-bots, the Chinese making cheap knock-offs and an American start-up company offering free robots that tended to the feeble as it harvested confidential medical information to defraud Medicaid. That won’t happen.
Instead, we tried importing cheap nurses from the Philippines and other countries that wanted to do better. Since all Western countries were doing the same thing, the supply of cheap and competent workers dried up.
Eventually, all we could get were jihadi-aged young men from countries that were culturally and cognitively dysfunctional. NGO’s sprung up to get these poor people from poor countries to be poor people in rich countries registered for all available government assistance programs.
Let’s not do that again.
Thought leaders couldn’t have people talking about how they screwed-the-pooch, so they made it uncomfortable to honestly discuss actual problems. Since anybody running anything had awkward issues, they all went along with avoiding honest discussion of real problems.
This is where science fiction is supposed to step in. Sensitive topics could be explored in a society from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. That way, nobody gets butt-hurt.
The movie Logan’s Run tackled this issue almost fifty years ago. Life was all fun and games. They even invented Tinder. They imagined that people would edit their photos and lie on their profiles, so Logan’s Tinder had the fuck-buddies show up in person.
It wasn’t explained how ‘the circuit’ got people to your apartment. They probably used tubes or something. Logan must have paid for the premium subscription. It only took two tries to hit pay dirt.
Either the algorithm had a blind spot or in Logan’s time, it wasn’t appropriate to list a sexual preference. Jessica was not DTF, so Logan asked if she preferred women.
Even in the future, it’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind. Jessica dressed for quick access and put herself on the circuit, because she was in a weird mood. It’s fine. Logan and Jessica became friends, cuddled when they had time and went on an adventure.
The gimmick for their society was that when a person turned 30 years old, a crystal attached to their palm, flashed red. A person with a flashing palm could choose a serene and dignified suicide in a booth, or they could face “carousel”. Carousel is a fake obstacle course trial where you might make it out alive, but nobody does.
Since people over 30, aren’t fun and don’t have perky tits like Jessica, they have to be hunted down if they don’t volunteer for the suicide booth or carousel. Logan’s job is to hunt old people, but his crystal lights up too soon, so he faces a conundrum.
That sounds like a harsh social contract, but teenagers would all vote for it.
Half of Americans 65 and older have nothing at all saved for future living assistance. We must start thinking about who will take care of grandma and grandpa.
The article in the WSJ can’t honestly discuss the problems resolve in Logan’s Run.
People in the United States spend a lot of money at the end of life. In fact, about one quarter of all Medicare spending goes toward care for people during their last year of life.
According to me, most of those elderly people don’t want that healthcare for the last year of life, but don’t have any acceptable alternative. This doesn’t accomplish anything.
The author is a physician at Columbia University.
I’ve treated elderly patients who had been found wandering the streets, lying in their own excrement or simply dehydrated because of gaps in care.
Ask anyone who recently retired if they would like to be kept alive when their brains are gone or they are so physically deteriorated, they can’t get a glass of water or keep from lying in their own shit. Nobody wants that, and it’s cruel to expect or impose it.
But if robots can now fold laundry, serve food, sweep the floor, operate computers, talk, walk and dance, it’s plausible that soon they will help our elders out of bed and give them sponge baths. One estimate places the cost of such a humanoid robot at $20,000—not bad compared with a nursing home.
None of this is going to happen. It’s dangerous to think we don’t have to address the challenge of old age because a tech miracle will deliver us.
When a person’s mental capability is gone and not coming back, there is nothing to be gained by keeping their clock ticking. Start there.
When a person is so physically depleted that they can’t, and will never be able to, care for themselves, there is no cost to the patient to insist on all medical treatments if the government is paying the bill. The only cost is the tedium of being bedridden. If grandma and grandpa care about their heirs, they may choose to go silently to retain some wealth to pass down.
Science fiction has been making promises and issuing warnings about humanoid machines since before the Czech writer Karel Čapek introduced the word “robot” in a 1920 play.
Purpose-built robots for specific patient-care tasks are plausible and will be built. For instance, food and drink could be delivered autonomously. Beds could be designed to turn a patient or be easily cleaned.
There is no likelihood that a humanoid robot will be economically produced so there is no need to tend to infirm patients. That’s what children and grandchildren are for. When people understand that, perhaps they will start having children and grandchildren.
Technology will change old age. When Millennials and Gen X becomes infirm, they may be satisfied to move around in a virtual environment, sitting in a webbed hammock that can be automatically hosed down, while they ingest a nutrient-rich slurry through a tube.
When Gen Z is old enough to for Social Security, they may be surprised that the world hadn’t ended due to existential threats they’ve heard about their entire lives. Since they didn’t expect to live this long, they’ve saved nothing for retirement, their prospects are bleak, and they never really enjoyed life much anyway, they may be eager to give up the ghost if there is a chance the event could go viral on social media.
Leave a Reply