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My father has dementia. I have some hope that robotics together with AI will make good caretakers for people with dementia. Interacting with him is not very com
by rqtwteye 3y ago
My father has dementia. I have some hope that robotics together with AI will make good caretakers for people with dementia. Interacting with him is not very complex. It’s basically just a repeat of the same conversations. Very labor intensive for humans but an AI would have way more patience.
- jacooper 3y agoRather more like infinite patience.
- veggieburrito 3y agoInteresting to hear someone articulate this dynamic. I do not believe my father has dementia but there are similarities in regards to “repeat of the same conversations”. Wish you and your family well.
- rerdavies 3y agoMy mother has dementia. At present, conversations repeat on about 3 minute intervals. There is significant value to catching early signs of dementia.
- btilly 3y agoWhat is the value in catching early signs of dementia given that we have no useful treatments for it?
- smetj 3y agoGetting prepared for what is to come for everyone involved?
- lkuty 3y agoYou might want to read Drop Acid by Perlmutter, stuff about sugar by Robert Lustig and maybe Fiber Fueled by Bulsiewicz. They give pointers to why Alzheimer might happen in the first place and how to avoid it. Those are life-long advices.
- rerdavies 3y agoThere are no cures; but there are treatments that can delay onset, slow progression, and improve quality of life to varying extents depending on which disease.
- lostlogin 3y agoThere was a great post here recently about automating some of this work. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35749579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35749579
- zonkerdonker 3y agoWow, yeah, I've never thought about this use case for AI. Honestly seems pretty ideal. A relative of mine afflicted with dementia recently passed, and while they still needed physical care, an AI "person" to bounce questions off of and talk to would have done wonders for them, and saved their carer a lot of stress and effort in a difficult time.
- ljlolel 3y agoSomeone here built an amazing tool for this. They should commercialize it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35749579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35749579
- jtbayly 3y agoI can understand the impulse, but boy do I hope my family won’t turn me over to a computer in my dotage. I’d rather be loved than managed.
- wernercd 3y agoI would hope the solution would be both... humans augmented by computers so that the humans aren't overloaded and overly burdened.
- vanattab 3y agoLove is a burden no way around it. Some burdens are worth carrying however.
- nayaketo 3y agoWe'll just need to create an AI that'll emulate love semi-perfectly.
- kergonath 3y agoLet us reimplement love in Rust from first principles to solve this inconvenience. Nothing can go wrong, it’ll be so disruptive and innovative.
- concordDance 3y agoDon't engage in negative sum transactions. The burden on families by a dementia patient is often higher than the benefit the dementia patient gets.
- rqtwteye 3y agoCaring for a dementia patient properly is all consuming for the caretakers. You don’t want to do this to your family. Getting help from a robot would be a win win for all.
- cm2012 3y ago
- iJohnDoe 3y agoI always thought healthcare for people is not well suited for humans to do. Doctors, yes. Everything else, no. It’s such a demanding job for nurses and hospice care workers to deal with such terrible human situations. Sadly, it will probably be decades before robots could take over for nurses