In November, The Wall Street Journal published an opinion editorial arguing robots could soon replace human caregivers for elderly Americans.
“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,” wrote Dr. Lydia Dugdale, a physician and ethicist at Columbia University.
Robots could accompany seniors on walks or to community events, Dugdale added. “They could enhance, rather than diminish, socialization.”
Canadian experts see a different future.
They say robots are being designed to support, not replace, caregivers by handling repetitive tasks while preserving human judgment, care and connection.
“I think robots are great technology to support caregivers and to support people that need care,” said Goldie Nejat, director of the Autonomous Systems and Biomechatronics Laboratory (ASBLab) at the University of Toronto.
“They’re not going to make the high‑level decisions … those decisions have to be made by health-care professionals.”
Aging Canada
Canada’s seniors are expected to account for about a quarter of the population by the 2030s, Statistics Canada data show.
Policy experts have long worried about the costs and means of caring for this aging population.
“We’re living longer and that’s great … but unfortunately, as we age, we have ailments that come up, whether they’re physical or cognitive,” Nejat said.
“How do we support people living through those? And what technologies can we [develop] to support caregivers?”
Personal support workers can assist seniors and people with disabilities with daily living tasks. But these workers are costly. In Ontario, for example, a personal support worker would cost around $10,000 and $20,000 a month for around-the-clock care.
Humanoid robots, by contrast, come with a one-time, upfront price tag of somewhere between $7,000 and $28,000. A really advanced model, such as UBTECH’s Walker C, is listed for sale in Canada for $214,000.
In January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Tesla chief executive Elon Musk suggested the company’s Optimus humanoid robots would be well-suited for eldercare within homes.
“Who wouldn’t want a robot to — assuming it’s very safe — watch over your kids, take care of your pets. If you have elderly parents — a lot of friends of mine have said that for elderly parents, it’s very difficult to take care of them,” he said.
Robot caregivers
Tesla’s Optimus robot is still under development, and the UBTECH Walker is designed to assist with customer service in corporate settings.
But robots are already being used in Canadian hospitals and long-term care facilities.
“In COVID, we had our robots out there taking [the] temperature of people, making sure they’re wearing masks,” said Nejat, referring to socially assistive robots designed by her lab at the University of Toronto.
Ajung Moon, director of a robotics ethics lab at McGill University, points to various ways robots are augmenting health care and service work in Canada.
PARO, a baby harp-seal robot, is used in Canadian hospitals and long-term care homes to help reduce dementia patients’ agitation and anxiety. The robots have a similar effect as pet therapy, says Moon, who is also a member of the Canadian Robotics Council, a nonprofit that promotes the robotics sector nationally.
“Rather than having a nurse who is interacting with one particular patient and trying to keep this person socially engaged, by having a novelty pet‑like experience … it actually invites other people to socialize with each other,” said Moon.
Nejat’s lab has developed a family of socially assistive, character-like robots designed for older adults to use in care settings.
“They don’t do a task, they don’t physically touch you,” said Nejat about the robots, which are currently being tested. “It’s all through verbal and nonverbal interaction. And then the whole idea is they … prompt you to do the task yourself, so you keep those skills.”
Leia, a desktop robot with human-like characteristics, prompts individuals to complete daily tasks such as eating, bathing, dressing and taking medication.
“They’ll have two arms … They have eyes, maybe a nose or a mouth … but they look like a character,” said Nejat.
“They’re very rounded, so maybe you could say they look like cartoon characters … they don’t seem intimidating that way, either.”
Nejat’s lab has also developed activity and therapy robots that run bingo, trivia and memory games, or lead exercise and dance sessions.
“Since they interact like you and I do, there’s no learning curve … you don’t have to learn how to use the robot because it communicates to you the same way you would communicate with a person,” said Nejat.
“It’s able to understand your intent, what your emotions are, through speech and non‑verbal body language [and] your facial expressions.”
‘Human touch’
Nejat says she does not foresee AI robots replacing human caregivers in Canada.
“Human touch is completely different — that can never be replaced,” she said. “When you need care, you need that emotional support, that cognitive support.”
Moon agrees that eldercare, broadly understood, is not something that can be easily automated.
“Care, ultimately … has a lot more to do with the amount of care we exercise in the process of delivering that result,” she said. “Even if the results are poor, there is a lot more to do with the interaction itself.”
Scott Schieman, a University of Toronto sociologist who studies perceptions of AI and automation, agrees that care work remains among the hardest jobs to replace. But he notes that robots can offer a consistency of service that can be lacking from human care.
Schieman’s own experience caring for his late mother in hospice reflected that tension. While some caregivers were “just so amazing,” others were less reliable.
“I had this other experience … [where] I would have rather been dealing with a robot. Straight up,” he said.
“Robots don’t have bad days.”
In her Wall Street Journal op-ed, Dugdale made a similar point:
“Human caregivers can lose their tempers, but robots are unlikely to have that problem,” she wrote. She pointed to a recent study in which observers found AI-generated responses “to be more empathetic, validating and compassionate than those of humans.”
For Nejat, robots present a way to make human caregivers’ work more meaningful and less stressful.
“It really takes a certain kind of person to care for someone day in and day out,” said Nejat.
“If we can support [care workers] somehow, they can do the higher-level decision-making … have those high-level interactions with their residents or their patients.
“That’s what they went into this profession for.”
As a Canadian senior, absolutely NO. Robots in the field of healthcare at any level is not something I want to see happen. Not for “consistency of service” or anything else. And the fact that you’re quoting Elon Musk as a source or expert in this idea makes anything else you say suspect and invalid.
i as a senior do want robot elder care. I can see the benefits
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