Co-creating Humanistic AI AgeTech to Support Dynamic Care Ecosystems: A Preliminary Guiding Model

Abstract As society rapidly digitizes, successful aging necessitates using technology for health and social care and social engagement. Technologies aimed to support older adults (e.g., smart homes, assistive robots, wheelchairs) are increasingly applying artificial intelligence (AI), and thereby creating ethical challenges to technology development and use. The international debate on AI ethics focuses on implications to society (e.g., bias, equity) and to individuals (e.g., privacy, consent). The relational nature of care, however, warrants a humanistic lens to examine how “AI AgeTech” will shape, and be shaped by, social networks or care ecosystems in terms of their care actors (i.e., older adults, care partners, service providers); inter-actor relations (e.g., care decision-making) and relationships (e.g., social, professional); and evolving care arrangements. For instance, if an older adult’s reduced functioning leads actors to renegotiate their risk tolerances and care routines, smart homes or robots become more than tools that actors configure; they become semi-autonomous actors, in themselves, with the potential to influence functioning and interpersonal relationships. As an experientially-diverse, transdisciplinary working group of older adults, care partners, researchers, clinicians, and entrepreneurs, we co-constructed intersectional care experiences, to guide technology research, development, and use. Our synthesis contributes a preliminary guiding model for AI AgeTech innovation that delineates humanistic attributes, values, and design orientations, and captures the ethical, sociological, and technological nuances of dynamic care ecosystems. Our visual probes and recommended tools and techniques offer researchers, developers/innovators, and care actors concrete ways of using this model to promote successful aging in AI-enabled futures.