The rapid advancement of Generative AI (GenAI) technologies presents new opportunities to support daily living for older adults. This project aims to understand the needs, concerns, and ideas regarding GenAI and develop GenAI technologies for healthy aging.
Co-designing GenAI with Older Adults
The increase in life expectancy worldwide is a global success story, but along with reduced birth rates, it has resulted in a growing population of older adults and relatively fewer young adults available to provide care. By 2050, the 65-plus cohort is projected to account for 35-40% of the population of several industrialized countries. Many older adults prefer independent living and aging in place, but physical and cognitive changes can make this challenging.
In collaboration with MIT AgeLab and Anastasia Ostrowski (Personal Robots group), we conducted two co-design workshops in April 2024 with older adults and caregivers to understand their needs and concerns around GenAI, and opportunities for GenAI to benefit daily tasks.
We reveal four main areas of opportunity, which represent the participants’ perspectives on their most important needs that could be met with GenAI and their ideas for how GenAI can meet those needs by supporting daily tasks: (1) health assistance and monitoring, (2) memory assistance and reminders, (3) communication assistance, and (4) technology learning and troubleshooting.
We identified key concerns and considerations when designing GenAI for daily task support, including privacy, security, accessibility, emotional intelligence, and supplementing humans rather than replacing them.
We also present design recommendations and a conceptual framework for developing future GenAI-powered systems that address older adults’ needs while respecting their concerns. This research contributes to research on age-inclusive AI design, providing insights for developers and policymakers working on GenAI solutions for healthy aging.