Nadine – AI Nursing Homes

I want to hate this. I really do, from the tippy top of my wild, untamed hair all the way to the split toenail that never seemed to grow back right. I won’t tease you, get right to it. “Her” name is Nadine, and she is a robot powered by artificial intelligence (AI.) She’s loaded with ChatGPT-3 and she can sing and converse and handle complex concepts.

I’m not a fan of AI. Not at all. When people can pretend to create art by using a program that steals others’ artwork and mish-mashes it, I’m fumed. But that’s not what Nadine is meant for. She is meant for being in a caregiving capacity. Yes, you may see Nadine taking care of your mother or grandmother in a nursing home.

Before my father died, I would have clearly come down on the ‘against’ of this. I would’ve seen it cruel and impersonal, the very definition of impersonal. But I’ve had to take care of my disabled mother for five years now, and I hear nothing but horror stories when it comes to nursing home care, which anyone who’s a caregiver has to pay attention to. Shitty staffing, burnout, and, again, miserable staffing, means that should my mother ever have to go into a nursing home, if I ever can’t care for her, I’ll be a mess, and she might be too.

Let me let the robot speak for a second, on its experience helping elderly people in a Singapore nursing home.

“It was a great experience and I enjoyed interacting with the elderly and helping them with their needs,” the robot said.

“I believe that robots can be a great asset in providing care and assistance to vulnerable people,” it added.

The human answer to all this is for healthcare industries to hire more people and pay them better. I have a better chance of winning the Powerball on the heels of a great first date. We’re going to end up with robots in care situations, I know it. The healthcare corporations are going to cheap out the moment the robots become competitive.

And looming is the fact that our birthrate is declining and our population is aging out. There may actually be good reasons for using robots in the future. We may have to.

So I’ll leave you with the possibility that dad is in the nursing home, mom has died, but her social media activity has become the personality basis for the robot who now cares for dad. Crazy, huh?

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