Analysis uncovers the role of political economy in AI policies for older adults, suggesting materialities shape outcomes.
The current discourse on AI in gerontology remains mostly on an interventionist level and focused on solving problems faced by individuals, leaving the wider social conditions that shape the relationship between aging and AI out of view. The considerable accumulation of power, particularly for technology development companies, in the development and implementation of AI, however, calls for a deeper and more complex analysis of the relationships between AI, older adults and the “aging enterprise” (Estes, 1979). Building on the classical political economy of aging, and expanding it with concepts from material gerontology, we propose a “political economy of aging and AI” as a conceptual tool to analyze the relationships between (older) individuals, social and political structures and (technological) materialities. We exemplify how such a political economy perspective enables a more complex consideration of the current discourse on a) AI solutions, b) AI ethics and c) AI policies. We close by summarizing our understanding of a political economy of aging and AI that centers materialities as the critical-gerontological focus of analysis and by outlining calls for action towards strengthening the power of older adults in the emerging AI-aging-enterprise.
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Gallistl et al. (2025) studied this question.
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