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Comment by rqtwteye | Hacker News Reader

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.

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I 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.

I would hope the solution would be both... humans augmented by computers so that the humans aren't overloaded and overly burdened.

Love is a burden no way around it. Some burdens are worth carrying however.

We'll just need to create an AI that'll emulate love semi-perfectly.

Let us reimplement love in Rust from first principles to solve this inconvenience. Nothing can go wrong, it’ll be so disruptive and innovative.

Don't engage in negative sum transactions. The burden on families by a dementia patient is often higher than the benefit the dementia patient gets.

Caring 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.

Seriously. My grandpa had dementia for 10 years. Pretty much everyone in my family doesn't want to inflict that on anyone else.

Senile people are going to love the AIs of 10 years from now, I guarantee you. Once it has perfect audio control and responses, it's going to be like the perfect friend for an old person.

Wow, 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.

Someone here built an amazing tool for this. They should commercialize it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35749579

Interesting 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.

My mother has dementia. At present, conversations repeat on about 3 minute intervals. There is significant value to catching early signs of dementia.

What is the value in catching early signs of dementia given that we have no useful treatments for it?

Getting prepared for what is to come for everyone involved?

You 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.

There 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.

I 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

Rather more like infinite patience.

There was a great post here recently about automating some of this work.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35749579

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