industry & policy
Changing the conversation:
The future of carers and caring
What role will carers play in
a world filled with artificial
intelligence and robots?
By Michael Fine
I
n the first week of October I attended the International Carers
Conference, held in Adelaide. While it was the seventh such
conference, it was the first time this high-profile international
event had taken place in Australia.
Over the past 40 years in Australia, and 50-plus years in the UK,
the carers movement has achieved a lot. As a result, there is much
to celebrate and evaluate, such as the ground-breaking passage
of carer recognition legislation in both countries over the past
decade and the development of a relatively vigorous multinational
representative organisation – the International Alliance of Carer
Organizations, which now covers 13 countries, including many big
ones such as the USA, Japan and India.
But while these developments have brought about some
changes in the wellbeing and other outcomes of most
caregivers to date, the carers movement – locally, nationally and
internationally – is still seeking a strategy to break through with
real lasting impact.
What can it hope to achieve and how might this be done at a
time of increasing austerity and government cutbacks?
What approach is capable of bringing lasting and significant
change to the lives of those who currently provide unpaid care?
Although so far market solutions seem to have fallen well short
of providing answers for most unpaid caregivers, it is the market,
not government, that politicians and policymakers increasingly
invoke as the only viable solution. Many attending the conference,
10 agedcareinsite.com.au
however, would argue that markets have exacerbated rather
solved the problems of care.
Amid the hundreds of papers, plenaries and keynotes presented,
three major strategic preoccupations stood out for me.
First, the increasing hopes held for technological ‘solutions’ to the
need for care in the contemporary world. A relatively new theme
in the carers’ world, technological progress presents a surprisingly
optimistic, even utopian, vision in which the market could
conceivably help rather than hinder progress.
Dreamy-eyed young tech visionaries (nearly all of whom seem
to be male, a rarity in the overwhelmingly female world of carers),
as well as a vast number of IT startup firms and large multinational
corporations around the world, are seeking to emulate the creative
approaches to innovation and wealth creation employed by the big
Silicon Valley companies.
Like the medical miracles offered by pharmaceutical companies
and surgeons, new technology was presented by tech gurus and
a few happy beneficiaries as the disruptive innovation that could
solve many and perhaps all the problems of disability and ageing. It
could also create fabulous wealth for the copyright owners in the
process – a matter that seems to inspire much of the enthusiasm of
the venture capitalists behind the process, but which was otherwise
not discussed by the carer representatives and government policy
wonks attending.
Developments such as artificial intelligence systems that can
predict behaviour and simplify complicated, time consuming
decision-making processes; enhanced virtual reality systems; and
various forms of robotics, such as exoskeletons, were presented as
the next great thing, capable of transforming the lives of even the
most severely disabled person.
Just as smartphones have become ubiquitous, so too, it was
argued by a stream of enthusiasts, will these sorts of inventions
provide new pathways to independence for many – and although
it was never actually said, presumably replace the need for care