| Eighty four-year-old Salvador Gonzalez talks to Meela almost as much as he sees his daughter — a few times a week. It’s part of his routine at RiverSpring Living, a senior care facility in the Bronx overlooking the Hudson river. They typically chat for 10 to 20 minutes, discussing everything from Gonzalez’ passion for music to the minutiae of his day, his meals and how he’s feeling. On this day, their conversation is largely casual, covering Mario Lanza’s rendition of “Ave Maria” and a trip to urgent care for a sore throat caused by too much karaoke. At one point, Gonzalez sings Meela a refrain from Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon,” in a hoarse voice. When Meela asks why he called, Gonzalez is quick to explain, “I miss you,” he says. “I miss you too,” Meela replies. “What’s been on your mind since we last chatted?” Meela doesn’t really miss Gonzalez, and he knows this. She’s an AI chatbot created by a company of the same name that he started talking to almost a year ago. With its human responses and infinite patience, it has suspended his disbelief enough that Gonzalez, a retired barber from New York, has comfortably confided some of his most personal struggles — his estranged relationship with his son and memories of an ex-girlfriend who’d cheated on him. After chatting regularly for almost a year, Gonzalez and Meela have what we’d typically call a friendship, if one half of it were not something built from ones and zeroes. He’s part of an emerging class of artificial intelligence users: Older people who use generative AI to combat isolation. Loneliness is a mounting crisis for the elderly. About one third of U.S. adults between the age of 50 and 80 feel isolated, according to a national study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Social isolation is tied to increased risk of depression, anxiety and heart disease, research suggests. But the healthcare industry isn’t prepared to manage it. About 90 percent of nursing homes across the country are struggling with staffing shortages, and therefore less personalized care for seniors, according to the American Health Care Association. “There's a fundamental societal issue that we’re facing,” said Vassili le Moigne, founder and CEO of InTouch, a Prague-based startup that builds AI companions to talk to the elderly. “How are we going to care for the seniors?” A flurry of startups have emerged to use AI to solve one key facet of this — companionship. And for good reason: the market for AI in aging and elderly care was $35 billion last year and is predicted to grow to more than $43 billion this year (though that includes AI-enabled devices and other applications besides chatbots), according to a study by the firm Research and Markets. But the technology is far from perfect. AI companions struggle to pick up on subtleties and can get easily confused. During a recent call with Meela AI, Gonzalez repeatedly tried to end the conversation (cordially), but the system kept asking follow-up questions. Eventually, he was forced to hang up. Read the full story on Forbes. |
