Lonely in retirement? Try AI
In the year 2029, the resistance led by John Conner destroys Skynet ending the battle with the self aware machines powered by AI that was created by Cyberdyne.
Some unfamiliar might read this and ask if Cyberdyne is a new tech company here to compete with Chat or my AI buddy Claude. Others of us might be showing our age and the generation of movies we grew up with.
Sadly, or not so sadly, that was the movie Terminator. But it does make you curious if James Cameron was some sort of prophet back in 1984 given the rise of AI in our current world only a few years from 2029.
While we may be a few years away from war with the machines I choose to look at some of what AI is doing for us now that is good for us and not here to destroy us, yet.
Seniors in the US are turning to AI as well, which is a surprising trend. But they are not turning to it to build apps, make marketing plans, and aggregate large piles of data. No, AI is helping fight one of the big problems that aging has - loneliness.
Forbes recently covered this use of AI with seniors and how it is helping with loneliness, boosting safety and how it is helping to scale support.
You can find that article here.
MIT recently did a study “Investigating how usage of chatbots for social and emotional purposes affects loneliness in older adults”
During the days of being stuck at home during COVID, my daughter had a chat bot she would talk with. She programmed hers to be her dad and he was Batman. It was quite entertaining and provided some level of relational outlet different from doom scrolling TikTok yet not quite human and interpersonal.
A study from Harvard found similar results that chats with AI “significantly reduces loneliness.” You can read more about their findings here and it comes with words of caution about completely outsourcing relationships to AI. This is probably something we all intuit to some degree.
In terms of finance and circumstances around the future poor in this country, AI might be a type of bridge. It isn’t a magic bullet for relationships and certainly can’t be pushed aside. Loneliness and isolation are key factors in mental health for seniors which has a significant financial drag on their individual, familial and social finances. AI might be able to fill in some relational gaps that we need to curb some of this issue.
We shall see as more research comes out about this growing technology.
As always, if you come across a financially related article you’d like to send my way please do!
Best place to send them is to me.
More next time!
Jonathan