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There's a real opportunity here for Japan to show how a country can maintain it's output and standard of living under a declining population. They are already s

There's a real opportunity here for Japan to show how a country can maintain it's output and standard of living under a declining population. They are already strong in automation, and have a culture of using more people than necessary to do stuff. I'd like to see them find a way to do more or the same with the people they have and be able to carry on with fewer working age people, as a model to the rest of us.

shagie 4y ago
Jan 9, 2023: Inside Japan’s long experiment in automating elder care - The country wanted robots to help care for the elderly. What happened? https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/09/1065135/japan-automating-eldercare-robots/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/09/1065135/japan-au... > Why haven’t they taken off? The answer tells us something about the limitations of techno-solutionism and the urgent need to rethink our approach to care. > Japan has been developing robots to care for older people for over two decades, with public and private investment accelerating markedly in the 2010s. By 2018, the national government alone had spent well in excess of $300 million funding research and development for such devices. At first glance, the reason for racing to roboticize care may seem obvious. Almost any news article, presentation, or academic paper on the subject is prefaced by an array of anxiety-inducing facts and figures about Japan’s aging population: birth rates are below replacement levels, the population has started to shrink, and though in 2000 there were about four working-age adults for every person over 65, by 2050 the two groups will be near parity. The number of older people requiring care is increasing rapidly, as is the cost of caring for them. At the same time, the already large shortage of care workers is expected to get much worse over the next decade. There’s little doubt that many people in Japan see robots as a way to fill in for these missing workers without paying higher wages or confronting difficult questions about importing cheap immigrant labor, which successive conservative Japanese governments have tried to curtail. --- > ... > Care crises aren’t the natural or inevitable result of demographic aging. Instead, they are the result of specific political and economic choices. > In short, the machines failed to save labor. The care robots themselves required care: they had to be moved around, maintained, cleaned, booted up, operated, repeatedly explained to residents, constantly monitored during use, and stored away afterwards. Indeed, a growing body of evidence from other studies is finding that robots tend to end up creating more work for caregivers. --- I want to say that the approach that they're looking to do with robots replacing humans rather than augmenting humans is an approach that is going to be problematic.
- version_five 4y ago
  I'm very against automating the human parts of healthcare. I posted in a discussion recently and it seemed like I was in the minority. Hopefully "caring professions" (I think that's David Graeber's term) are the ones that are not automated. But japan in particular is a manufacturing powerhouse with a lot of existing good automation as well as a lot of layers of administration. With a cultural shift, they can do more with less people.
  - Retric 4y ago
    There’s a great deal in healthcare just begging to be automated that has nothing to do with the “human touch.” Filling a prescription often involves someone making six figures counting pills by hand… On top of this is the dignity angle. I suspect many would prefer to be capable of bathing and dressing themselves rather than needing to rely on a caregiver.
  - dinosaurdynasty 4y ago
    I have to wait over a month to see a registered dietitian to _hopefully_ deal with SIBO. This is not unusual for healthcare. Refusing to automate the "human" parts of healthcare will do nothing but kill people due to delayed or expensive care. Imagine a world where everyone had a doctor with all current medical knowledge available 24/7!
    - version_five 4y ago
      That's a failing of your country's healthcare system, not an argument for automation. Getting to talk to a chatbot or whatever you have in mind is not a substitute for a real person, and will just introduce a norm of impersonal stereotyped healthcare if people are ignorant enough to believe it's a suitable substitute for getting seen by a real person.
      - dinosaurdynasty 4y ago
        Yeah I already know I live in the USA. However: seeing an "AI" (you think this will end with chatbots?) >>>>>>>>>> not seeing a real person
manojlds 4y ago
The whole ChatGPT related developments seem timely for Japan then

shagie 4y ago

Jan 9, 2023: Inside Japan’s long experiment in automating elder care - The country wanted robots to help care for the elderly. What happened? https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/09/1065135/japan-automating-eldercare-robots/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/09/1065135/japan-au... > Why haven’t they taken off? The answer tells us something about the limitations of techno-solutionism and the urgent need to rethink our approach to care. > Japan has been developing robots to care for older people for over two decades, with public and private investment accelerating markedly in the 2010s. By 2018, the national government alone had spent well in excess of $300 million funding research and development for such devices. At first glance, the reason for racing to roboticize care may seem obvious. Almost any news article, presentation, or academic paper on the subject is prefaced by an array of anxiety-inducing facts and figures about Japan’s aging population: birth rates are below replacement levels, the population has started to shrink, and though in 2000 there were about four working-age adults for every person over 65, by 2050 the two groups will be near parity. The number of older people requiring care is increasing rapidly, as is the cost of caring for them. At the same time, the already large shortage of care workers is expected to get much worse over the next decade. There’s little doubt that many people in Japan see robots as a way to fill in for these missing workers without paying higher wages or confronting difficult questions about importing cheap immigrant labor, which successive conservative Japanese governments have tried to curtail. --- > ... > Care crises aren’t the natural or inevitable result of demographic aging. Instead, they are the result of specific political and economic choices. > In short, the machines failed to save labor. The care robots themselves required care: they had to be moved around, maintained, cleaned, booted up, operated, repeatedly explained to residents, constantly monitored during use, and stored away afterwards. Indeed, a growing body of evidence from other studies is finding that robots tend to end up creating more work for caregivers. --- I want to say that the approach that they're looking to do with robots replacing humans rather than augmenting humans is an approach that is going to be problematic.

version_five 4y ago
I'm very against automating the human parts of healthcare. I posted in a discussion recently and it seemed like I was in the minority. Hopefully "caring professions" (I think that's David Graeber's term) are the ones that are not automated. But japan in particular is a manufacturing powerhouse with a lot of existing good automation as well as a lot of layers of administration. With a cultural shift, they can do more with less people.
- Retric 4y ago
  There’s a great deal in healthcare just begging to be automated that has nothing to do with the “human touch.” Filling a prescription often involves someone making six figures counting pills by hand… On top of this is the dignity angle. I suspect many would prefer to be capable of bathing and dressing themselves rather than needing to rely on a caregiver.
- dinosaurdynasty 4y ago
  I have to wait over a month to see a registered dietitian to _hopefully_ deal with SIBO. This is not unusual for healthcare. Refusing to automate the "human" parts of healthcare will do nothing but kill people due to delayed or expensive care. Imagine a world where everyone had a doctor with all current medical knowledge available 24/7!
  - version_five 4y ago
    That's a failing of your country's healthcare system, not an argument for automation. Getting to talk to a chatbot or whatever you have in mind is not a substitute for a real person, and will just introduce a norm of impersonal stereotyped healthcare if people are ignorant enough to believe it's a suitable substitute for getting seen by a real person.
    - dinosaurdynasty 4y ago
      Yeah I already know I live in the USA. However: seeing an "AI" (you think this will end with chatbots?) >>>>>>>>>> not seeing a real person

manojlds 4y ago

The whole ChatGPT related developments seem timely for Japan then