New York is Giving Robots to the Elderly

New York state officials announced a new program to distribute hundreds of robots to act as companions for elderly residents, in an attempt to combat America’s ongoing ‘loneliness epidemic.’

🤖 A deeper dive... NY’s State Office for the Aging plans to hand out more than 800 “ElliQ” personal robots (☝️), which are manufactured by Israel-based Intuition Robotics and described as a “more proactive version of Siri or Alexa.”

• ElliQ is designed to converse with users, read poetry, play games, give reminders to take medication, and more. Its ‘face’ lights up and swivels to ‘look’ at the people it’s talking to, while the touchscreen tablet can display pictures and other info, or conduct video calls.
• The robot is also designed to remember key user details and shape its personality in reponse – for example, cracking more jokes if the user tends to laugh a lot.

📊 The potential impact: A 2018 study from the Kaiser Foundation found more than one in five US adults said they often or always felt lonely or socially isolated; recent research suggests that long-term loneliness is as damaging to an individual’s health as smoking or obesity.

🤖 Zoom out: The use of robots to keep elderly people company isn’t a novel idea. Countries with aging populations, like Japan, Denmark and Italy, were experimenting with similar gov’t-run programs before the pandemic, while a handful of states launched pilot programs after Covid became rampant.