Join in us for the final of several 2023 virtual sessions of the MIT AgeLab's ongoing Aging adn Equity series, a speaker series on the interesection of age, race, and ethnicity in longevity planning. 

Presentation Description: The U.S. Census reports that by 2034, the number of older adults (ages 65+) will outnumber children for the first time in our society’s history. With these reports come conversations on the future of aging in a world that has a limited capacity to engage in care work. One proposed solution is to use technology as a tool that can 1) support older adults aging in place, 2) support medical professionals and paid/unpaid caregivers in their roles, or 3) replace key tasks that human care workers perform. In this talk, I focus on one specific technology - voice assistants - and how they could be used to support care in long-term care settings with older adults. I argue that we can better leverage conversation in voice technologies to engage social aspects of care. I end by discussing a future of digital tools that support, rather than replace, human care work.

Speaker Description: Robin Brewer is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. Her research lies at the intersection of accessibility and social computing where she studies how older adults and disabled people engage with technology, leveraging strengths of these communities to design for creativity, expression, and agency. Dr. Brewer holds a Ph.D. in Technology and Social Behavior from Northwestern University, M.S. in Human-Centered Computing from the University of Maryland - Baltimore County, and B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland - College Park.