The Ockham Society

Abstract: The increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) robots in elderly care has raised concerns that replacing human caregivers with robots will undermine good care by reducing opportunities for human caring relations. This paper argues that this concern depends partly on an ambiguity in what it means for AI robots to “replace” human care. I distinguish replacing human caring relations from replacing humans in the performance of particular caring tasks. Drawing on care ethics and relational approaches to justice, I propose a working conception of good elderly care as care that promotes caring relations within a relationally just structure. I then argue that personally performing caring tasks is neither necessary nor sufficient for sustaining good caring relations. Delegating particular tasks to AI robots therefore does not necessarily amount to replacing human care. The close association between caring labour and caring relations arises partly because task performance is a visible manifestation of care, whereas attentiveness, responsibility, competence, and responsiveness are less directly observable. This association, however, risks reducing care to the completion of tasks. I argue that AI robots may instead create opportunities to shift from labour-expressed care to holistic care, in which human caregivers can devote greater attention to care recipients as whole persons rather than primarily to completing routine tasks. Nevertheless, this possibility is not guaranteed: institutional and economic pressures may encourage AI substitution without preserving human caring relations. The ethical evaluation of AI replacement should therefore focus not simply on whether robots replace human tasks, but on whether such replacement sustains caring relations within a relationally just structure.

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Ockham Society Convenors: Jack Tristani, Yuxin Tang and Meredith Ross-James | Ockham Society Webpage