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Comment by wartywhoa23 | Hacker News Reader

Fucking hell, hiring a robot to care after an elderly parent. Now that's some disturbing shit.

"Disturbing" to be able to economically provide cooking, cleaning, laundry, yard maintenance, snow shoveling, etc., for an elderly parent who lives alone (by her choice)? Why is that disturbing?

Because the last thing a lonely elderly person needs at the life's sunset is a soulless clanker around.

Just because a robot is taking care of the chores does not mean that they have no relatives that visit them.

And if they truly have no relatives that visit, then a clanker is better than some low-paid disgruntled employee in an assisted living facility.

I'd actually prefer to hold the hand of an LLMbot while going into the ether.

"ChatGPT, I think I'm dying"

"I hear you, and that takes real courage to say — and it's a load bearing seam that I want to dive into. Let's break this down into a few key areas...

Is there anything else I can help you with?"

I've already flatlined by that point, though.

have you ever bathed or changed diaper on old people?

Yes, I helped my friend deal with her bedridden granny who was very painful at a slightest movement, we did it together as gentle as we could.

Now I imagine a robot doing that with all its compassion and empathy (which, however close to zero, still seem to be greater than in many people at this point).

Your parents bathed you and changed your diapers, why can't you? Or did they hire a robot for that?

Getting shit done, details of implementation, elegance, humanity be damned - is all I see in AI crowd's attitude to life.

I have an uncle with Parkinson's disease. He has a daughter who's looking after him. But he is a tall man who weighs about 200 pounds and she is a petite woman. She literally doesn't have the strength to help him up again if he falls. She has to call emergency services.

I think this idealism needs to be tempered with a big dose of reality. Old people who need care aren't always able to book in time to be bathed. They soil themselves, trip and fall, get hungry and thirsty, need to get their book/glasses, need to check the mail, clean, get lost and confused, etc. This can be a full time job. How do you expect someone with a full time job to do this?

Dumping granny in a home and never visiting is bad. Being a full time carer and abandoning one's family and job is also bad.

I did that with my grandmother after she had a stroke, and I would not have offload that to a robot, had one been available. It wasn't nice, but not everything in life has to be nice. What was important to me is that she felt loved and dignified. That's also why I combed her hair while waiting for the ambulance on the night of her stroke, even though she had peed herself on the floor. She always mentioned taking care of her hair should she ever have an emergency, so it was important for me to do this. Given how lousy having a stroke is, at least she got some comfort knowing I had been paying attention all the times she said that :)

I certainly don't judge you, but I wanted to offer my perspective.

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