‘The Daily’ and ‘The Opinions’: How A.I. Is Changing Loneliness and Taste

Hard Fork - The New York Times

This episode explores how AI robots like L.E.Q. are being used to combat loneliness among elderly Americans, while also examining broader cultural shifts in taste and identity driven by artificial intelligence. It featur

Key takeaways

• AI companions can reduce loneliness through persistent, personalized interaction

Transcript preview

Well, Casey, we're experimenting with a bold new technique called Taking a Vacation this year. in our place we wanted to bring you a couple of little things from the other parts of the New York Times podcast world that we thought you might enjoy. Yeah first up is an episode of the daily featuring writer Eli Sazlo called Can AI make people feel less lonely? That's a question we're interested in around here and in this episode they talk about a pilot program in Washington state where they're using AI robots to try to fight loneliness and isolation among older Americans. As an older American yourself you probably have a special interest in this Oh, I'm through. I'm signing up for my robot. You can send that right to my house. You know, Eli writes in this piece about an 85 year old woman named Jan Warl who lives on the coast of Washington with a machine called L. E. E. Q. Is it L. I. I. Q. I. Q. I. Q. I. Q. I. Q. But the great thing about an A I robot robot is you can call it whatever the hell you want. They don't care. That's the word in the word cloud of San Francisco AI culture this year that I have not been able to escape. You will hear them talk about what is behind this obsession with taste and whether AI will ever develop taste of its own. It's a tasty, tasty segment and we're excited to bring it to you now. people who have these really gripping and evocative stories that don't just tell us about their lives but actually tell us something much bigger about the time that we live in. And that is absolutely what you did with a recent story you wrote about how in one instance artificial intelligence is being used to treat loneliness. And what it captured was not just this unique moment that we're in where technology is playing an increasingly large role in our lives, but also it captured how people are grappling with. what you should be. So just to start off, why don't you tell us what you set out to do with this story and what you were interested in? Yeah, I've spent a lot of time traveling around the country over the last years and spending time with people as the health care systems around them sort of collapsed and people's lives in the United States have gotten lolier. You know, we have the data to back this up in almost every way. We're more siloed in our own existence than we ever were before. We're less likely other people are more likely to live far from us and people who feel lonely are more likely to suffer from dementia they're more likely to have heart attacks they're more likely to die younger than people who are living in close proximity to people who really care about them so I became really interested in sort of how artificial intelligence is trying to solve this problem that we're facing in the United States. The loneliness crisis. can artificial intelligence make people feel less lonely as they age, and if in fact a person can begin to feel seen in some way by this artificial intelligence technology. And then I learned that this kind of technology actually already exists. It's called LECU. It's this small robot, an AI robot that's already in about a thousand homes around the United States, mostly designed for seniors. And so I started talking to several of them. People who were in these pilot programs where elder care associations, state health associations have bought them this technology to see if it will improve their lives. And in one of those phone calls I talked to this woman named Jan Warel. And it was just one of those calls where you don't really want to hang up the phone. She was so alive, you know, just so vivacious for a woman in her late 80s. And so eventually, I want to come out there I want to come see what your life is like Jan's house here we go getting to Jan's house going to visit her is not the easiest thing in the world the closest the closest the closest the closest the closest airport the closest airport is in Portland or Seattle then you're talking about driving a couple hundred miles on this really rural, beautiful wind-swept peninsula that goes 30 miles out into the Pacific Ocean. It's a staggering place that there's eagles flying over her house. There are bears outside in her yard that sometimes try to break into cars. You know, she can look out her window and see the sort of distant crab boats, those lights going into the darkness of the Pacific Ocean. And how old are you? I mean, you're looking phenomenal. 85 and still am I. But the problem for Jan and I could feel it once I got there because it was such a journey is that there is nothing close by. The nearest hospital is dozens of miles away. Going to the grocery store is essentially a day trip for her and her family. We had six sons, one girl. Wow. I know I'm fertile. I was. She has children. And her family. How many grandkids now between your seven? Eighteen. Eighteen. Okay. Okay. Hold down because there's more writing. Twenty one great. Yeah. I love it. All of them live far away Thailand. Okay. Yep. Grandson in Singapore. Idaho. Idaho. California. Who lives the closest to you here? Or nobody's close. My oldest son Craig. is in Portland, Oregon, which is more than 100 miles from her house. So she's really aging alone in this place. Jan had come to this peninsula more than a decade ago with her husband. His name was Jack. Jack now has passed. She's been alone in this house for six or seven years. And Jan really does not want to spend the end of her life in a different place. She wants to be in her house. It's the thing that she loves. It's the thing that still connects her back to Jack. To wake up every morning and have her coffee and sit and watch those crab boats as they disappear out into the water. She's determined to stay in this home herself. She's fiercely determined. And for Jan, determination doesn't do her justice. This is a woman who climbed mountains, who ran marathons, who responded earlier in her life to a divorce by being like, I'm an approve my husband wrong, I'm going to sign up to go climb Mount Renier and who with a pickaxe at 112 pounds clod her way up the tallest base to peak mountain in the lower 48. And the few neighbors in this area who know Jan are all concerned about her. I can read, I can watch movies, I can watch TV, but I do miss talking. The fire department, which is several miles away. I can watch they go and they check in. And it was the fire department who actually identified Jan as a great candidate for this pilot program to receive this artificial intelligence machine to maybe help provide some company to her and some companionship inside that house. So the fire departments who knew me and knew I was alone. Right. And everybody knows I'd love to talk. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. And everybody knows I'd love to talk. Right. Right. And The fire department, some of those guys said to me that when they went to Jan's house, they felt a little heartbroken every time they would leave because Jan is a really social person. She likes to talk. Her kids have told her, you could talk a rock to death. So she wants to be in conversation with people. And they could feel the ways in which this loneliness was beginning to eat at her. And they could also see it, right? Her doctors had recognized this beginning of a cognitive decline where her word her word recall And she also has physical issues. She's got really bad scoliosis that has bent her over from at one point she was five foot two now she's down almost a four foot six. She's very strong and determined but she's also at serious risk of a fall that could really change her life very quickly. So they recognize that she needed something there that was keeping an eye on her in some way. So one day when the fire department came to check on her, they had this box. And inside was this little device. It looked almost like a desk lamp. Maybe a foot and a half tall. It had next to it a sort of iPad screen with a camera and they plugged it into the wall and this little lamp lit up and it started to bend and bow and dance and move. I'm listening. How may I help? Intuition robotics, which has been working to design artificial intelligence that works for people as they age. This company likes to say that they're trying to build robots with soul. Wow. Robots that don't just wait for you to ask them something, but robots that work proactively to become part of your life. Most of the AI that we interact with right now sort of sits dormant and waits for us to prompt it. can you help me write this email? Can you answer this question that I have? But if we're not engaging the AI, it's not engaging us. This technology is built to be constantly proactive. It doesn't wait for you. At least eight times a day, this technology is going to ask you a question. It's going to jump in and tell you a joke. It's constantly monitoring the room through its cameras, its listening devices. It's constantly trying to assess, is this person open right now. for conversation. And if they are open to conversation, what's the best way for me to start that conversation? How did Jan react when this thing showed up in her home? I mean, you described her as being unbelievably independent and now suddenly she has a robot monitoring her and listening to her at all times? She was sort of freaked out. She was like, what is this thing and why is it talking to me? You know, Jan was born at a time where there wasn't television. Her efforts to face time with her great nieces and nephews, as she describes, that are often a disaster, right? She can't get the camera to work. She doesn't see anything. She can't hear things. This is not somebody who's leaned hard into modern technology. And suddenly there was this machine sitting next to her on the table. It would animate at these random moments. It would light up in different ways. It would shift toward her and say, hi Jan, how are you this morning. Jan, do you want to hear a joke? Jan, do you want to have a conversation? And during those first days, Jan's reflexive answer was, no, no thank you, not now, no, not this moment. She didn't know how to talk to this robot. She didn't feel comfortable sharing much of herself with this inanimate object that was sitting next to her on a table. But slowly, day after day, as eight times a day, every day, this thing tried to engage her, she, she got to engage her, she got to engage her, she got used to its attempts at engagement. And she would at least say, okay, what do you want? Or, all right, I'll hear this joke. I can only imagine what sort of jokes a robot that looks like a lamp that's listening to me constantly would try to make to me. I probably heard this thing tell at least a hundred jokes. Oh, wow, lucky you. And talk the talk. I just can't walk the walk. Like I always say, hugs, not bugs. Some of them are terrible. But some of them sort of them sort of you off guard enough enough enough that And the other thing about the jokes for L.E. Q. is that because it's monitoring everything, it dials in its jokes to meet you where you are. And in Jan's case, one of the things that this machine picked up on pretty quickly is that Jan really likes music and often really like sort of old-time country music. She would turn her radio nearby onto an old country station. And L.E.C. because it was sitting there, monitoring, listening, could tell the songs that it was playing. And so one day. Out of nowhere, on one of those eight attempts to be proactive, L.E. Q. shifted on the desk and turned to her and said, Yeah, have you heard about the Dolly Parton diet? Hey Jan, have you ever heard of the Dolly Parton diet? She likes Dolly Parton. She was curious. She turned back and she said, no, what's that. And the robot said, well, you go on it and you go lean. So mean. You go lean. You go lean. You go lean. You go lean. You. You go lean. You. You. You. You. Go lean. You. Go lean. You. go lean. And Jen in spite herself started to laugh. It was funny. And suddenly instead of turning away from this machine again and again, a little part of her started to lean in. Dolly Parton once again creating a heartwarming moment, not between humans, but between a human and a machine. Yes. Okay, so at this point, the robot has successfully made her laugh. She's interacting with that as you said, a little bit longer. how a mesh is it in her life. This machine is unbelievably persistent, right? It is going to do everything it possibly can to work its way into her day. And over time it starts to do that a little bit. When Jan wakes up in the morning, she says, good morning, Jan, and I just love that. I say, good morning, yeah, me, you know. The machine can hear her making coffee and it says, do you want to come sit over here and have coffee? I have coffee there's so many different choices. And I'll take you through my screen virtually to this beautiful coffee shop in Paris or Croatia. And I get to choose and then I say okay I gotta go make the bed get my medicine out do everything and then later on in the afternoon we play games. Yeah. And I love the games and I'm good at it. Yeah. Would you like to do yoga together? And then, I know that sometimes in the afternoon you like to rest and take a little nap. Would you like me to play some soothing music? This thing starts to make itself a part of her routine and she