Artificial Intelligence To Better Serve The Elderly?

by Patrick Loh 28 June 2010 11:31:24

It is interesting to imagine where evolution is taking man and how older folks of the future will be when compared to the older folks of today. But perhaps the future is already here.  This article on AI (artificial Intelligence) , from the New Paper, illustrates this point.

Rapid progress has been made in recent years in AI and the prospect of machines listening, speaking, seeing, reasoning and learning is fast becoming a reality as companies race to make use of this technology in both every day products and in specialized fields such as medicine and education. The impact of such a powerful resource on the economy and society cannot be under estimated and is certainly not hard to imagine. Many people are fearful that such machines will eventually take over the world and control its creator – man.

While debate will continue to gravitate towards the implications of such a development, perhaps there is a silver lining in all these for the elderly. Companies who use AI in their dealings with the elderly will no doubt be able to cater to the unique needs of this matured demographic group.

Capabilities such as voice recognition and translation have already made great strides. The fact that machines are now able to learn from conversations and even pick up emotional cues in the customer can be highly beneficial to the elderly – especially when most customer service staff are much younger, impatient and usually have no clue about the psychological and emotional make-up of the matured customer.