Imagine you are thirty years old and returning home after a stressful day at work, wanting to take a long bath to relax. After staying in the tub for half an hour, alarms suddenly begin to ring and your phone starts ringing. Through home sensors, your family notices that you are spending more time than usual in the bathroom. After the situation calms down, you want to go to the kitchen for a glass of wine, but your smartwatch warns you not to drink it. The digital assistant reminds you that you drank wine on previous days, that this is very bad for your health, and that it may also affect your life insurance. You are advised to put the wine back in the fridge and go to bed; otherwise, you are warned that your family and doctor will be informed.
This scenario does not sound ideal. But what if the protagonist of the story were eighty years old? For many people, using technology to monitor and control older adults’ lives is seen as a way to ensure their safety and well-being, even at the cost of limiting their autonomy. Would this be an example of paternalism?
In the article by Cristina Voinea, Tenzin Wangmo, and Constantin Vica, it is argued that AI systems for elder care can be paternalistic toward older adults. The article shows how biases about age and aging can be implicitly embedded in AI technologies, and how ageism is reinforced through designers’ ideologies and beliefs or through data processed by AI systems. Ageism often relies on both positive and negative stereotypes: older adults are portrayed as warm and sympathetic, while also being depicted as inadequate, forgetful, and fragile. This combination can trigger complex emotional responses, which in turn can lead to paternalistic behavior toward older adults.
This study examines the concept of technological paternalism and explains how AI applications in elder care operate. The text includes detailed findings on how technology design, the depiction of older adults as potential users, and data collection and processing methods reinforce ageist attitudes through the creation and use of paternalistic AI systems in elder care.
Translator: Ahmet Er
Footnote: This text belongs to Cristina Voinea, Tenzin Wangmo, and Constantin Vica. It was translated from (https://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2024/08/paternalistic-ai-the-case-of-aged-care/). You can access the original version of the article at (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-024-03282-0).