At first glance, artificial intelligence (AI) companions for lonely seniors could seem dystopian, looking less like innovation than a bleak sign of social failure.
Spending a couple days last week in Tokyo nursing homes, I watched plushie robots the size of human babies being handed to aging parents and grandparents, and prototypes of conversational dolls aimed to fill gaps when family, community and human care fall short. It reminded me of showing ChatGPT’s advanced voice mode to my 97-year-old grandfather last year, shortly after my grandmother passed away. He was appalled, making clear he had no interest in chatting with the artificially cheery voice.
And yet my instinct to recoil at this all collides with a harder reality. Japan, like much of Asia, is aging fast and running short of caregivers. It is no surprise that policymakers are turning to technology. The nation is expected to face a shortage of 570,000 care workers by 2040, making the search for solutions increasingly urgent. And the meteoric rise of AI makes companion robots an attractive policy goal.
Illustration: Yusha
However, they are no panacea. They might have a place in the future of care, but the bigger risk is that governments and companies would use them to dodge the harder fixes required to treat care work as essential infrastructure. This involves increasing wages, supporting seniors who want to live at home and focusing on targeted tech solutions that help people maintain independence as they age.
Japan, long a leader in industrial automation, has been trying to make eldercare robots happen for a long time. Despite the immense hype, headlines and millions of dollars in government funding, it has yielded mixed results. Ghosts of these past efforts are still being put to use. In one of the facilities I visited, Softbank Group Corp’s since-discontinued Pepper slumped in the corner of a room before it was rebooted to conduct an exercise class — alongside a human handler who was doing the same motions right beside it. Some people seemed genuinely drawn to a stuffed animal robotic toy that would coo and react to touch, but the artificial bark rang in my ears for hours afterward.
In his 2023 book Robots Won’t Save Japan, ethnographic researcher James Wright said the country’s costly push into eldercare automation often produced unintended consequences and, in some cases, more work for staffers.
Much of the money might have been better spent elsewhere, he added.
However, Wright’s fieldwork largely predates the AI shock that has breathed new life into this push.
Despite persistent stereotypes, Japan’s has not widely embraced the idea of robots as friends. The country had the lowest share of respondents that said they were “extremely excited” about AI companions in an Ipsos survey of 21 countries. It also had the highest share — 46 percent — of people who said they have not used an AI tool or application in the past 12 months. There is no doubt AI has the potential to revolutionize workflows, especially in care facilities, but those efforts might be better spent on easing caregivers’ administrative burdens than replacing their face time with patients.
At one nursing home, the hopes for the potential of AI companion toys from their creators and caregivers was contagious. Even loving families cannot be present 24 hours a day, and engaging with the stuffed toy seemed better than staring at a wall. The engineered friendliness of chatbots has sowed concerns for its impact on young users, but what if that drive for engagement is conversely useful if it is aimed at keeping lonely seniors cognitively engaged?
Experimentation is spreading across Asia. In South Korea, government-led public welfare programs have distributed 14,000 AI-powered “Hyodol” devices to elderly people, baby-sized plushies that use ChatGPT to communicate. In China, some retirees are turning to apps such as ByteDance Ltd’s Doubao for ordinary frustrations of aging, such as deciphering tiny print on instruction manuals.
Tencent Holdings Ltd last month said it has run more than 200 local workshops teaching seniors how to use its Yuanbao chatbot for tasks such as asking for life hacks and recipes.
Beijing increasingly views the “silver economy” as a new growth engine, meaning there is also a lot of money to be made. One national political adviser told state-backed media that the market could reach US$4 trillion by 2035.
With worker shortages deepening across the region, governments are running out of time. The debate is often framed as a choice between technology and immigration. Policymakers, especially in Tokyo, would be wise to accept more foreign workers to plug labor gaps, but that is not a durable answer on its own. This is no longer just a Japan problem. By 2050, nearly all Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries (OECD) would be “super-aged,” with more than 20 percent of their populations older than 65. Asia’s scramble to care for an aging population is worth paying attention to as it offers a preview of the pressures much of the world would soon face.
As AI more broadly weasels its way into progressively intimate corners of our lives, companion bots seem like a well-meaning attempt to use the technology for good. However, they are just one tool in a kit that should have the larger goal of preserving dignity in old age and easing the burden of caregivers with whatever works — whether that is more robots, or even luring bodybuilders to the profession, as one company in the manufacturing and shipping hub of Nagoya, Japan, is doing.
Automation still has a place here. Research published last year on Japanese nursing homes found that robot adoption reduced worker quit rates and was associated with better care quality. The findings were telling: Robots may raise productivity by shifting staff toward tasks involving “human touch, empathy and dexterity,” where humans still hold the clear advantage.
However, one detail buried in research stood out: Care worker pay barely exceeded the minimum wage. Before investing millions more yen in robotic experiments, the next policy response might be to meaningfully lift wages as part of a broader effort to restore dignity and status to the work itself.
It seems inevitable that AI companions are coming into our parents and grandparents lives as they age. The test is whether they will serve as a useful support for human care, or a shiny excuse to abandon it.
Catherine Thorbecke is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia tech. Previously she was a tech reporter at CNN and ABC News. This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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