My question is not dismissive; it is a genuine enquiry into the nature and provision of care today. In my work in ethics and philosophy of life and organisational sciences, a consistent theme is what makes us human, and how those human attributes are challenged by changed social structures and in the development of technologies designed to augment or replace human activities.

A distinctive human attribute and activity is the giving and receiving of life-long care. This means not just for the nurture of the young as is seen across animal species, but at each stage of life, relating to needs and different vulnerabilities. This includes the care of the sick and the elderly certainly, but also the continuing daily care patterns seen in the home, which are explicit in the provision of food, clothing, hygiene and shelter, and implicit in the emotional nurture of the household.

Such an emotional and intentional dimension of nurture is what more radically qualifies caring as specifically human. It does not consist merely of functional tasks but of an intentional style in care, and of stewardship of the home, of relatives, and of the environmental and social contexts: of the constitutive relational dimensions of our human existence.

Care, at the core of human flourishing and well-being, has seen a significant shift over the last decades, not in its ongoing need but in the understanding of where the responsibility (and, when fully understood, the privilege) of providing care resides. Thus I began deliberately by citing the home as the self-evident place of care-giving. Self-evident because the home remains the most obvious experience of daily care, and because for much of human history it was “the given” context of such care. Intergenerational living, once the commonplace of the home, provided under one roof the support network and material goods for all from the youngest to the oldest family members. This family-home model of care has been at the heart of human experience, though it may be noted that ‘household’, as a more elastic term, can be useful here. Whatever word we use, the expectation of care-provision was that it would be available within the relationships of home.

From the perspective of the Global North, post-1945 developments in ideas of a welfare state, more fluid relationships and life-choices, increased mobility for study and employment have all challenged the static model of care. Put simply, in a society where children routinely move away from their home towns and where relationship breakdowns impact the reliability of life-long care, the state has an enhanced role in filling the gaps – or rather in changing the whole model – of care.

On one hand, care homes for the elderly and children “in care” became the province of the state, but as the language used suggests, the care offered is still ostensibly mirroring the human care provided by the birth-home. Those employed in this work are deemed “carers” or “care-assistants” though the low-pay and often poor conditions of such workers, most often women and frequently migrants, reveals a society which fundamentally undervalues their contribution. (This also mirrors the generally low-level of state financial support for the so-called “invisible carers”, family members providing complex care for relatives at home.)

On the other hand, questions arise when AI machines are supposed to perform better than us — in some functional aspects of the healthcare processes, for example. This demands disambiguation of the factual and intentional dimensions of caring, as has been said. It also asks for a deeper understanding of the value of caring as an action and work ‘of presence’. Caring in fact means being present, supporting, accompanying others, often taking care of common relationships, things and environments. The intrinsic relational dimension of caring therefore emerges, shedding light on what should be evaluated beyond functional or transactional facts: love and benevolence, gift and gratitude, freedom and hope, human co-existence (which etymologically interestingly means weaving together).

It is not unconnected that social analysis of the social and economic cost of providing the care needed for a fast-growing elderly population has risen. The development of machines to assist human care or to replace it altogether has, as previously stated, gathered momentum along with the exponential possibilities offered by AI.

The value of AI in diagnostics, surgical procedures and medical therapies is broadly uncontested. We see this in the academic literature and in datasets from healthcare providers. We also see it in the wide uptake of people buying and wearing digital devices to measure vital signs, sleep, exercise and diet patterns. The step from this to machine-led personal care is, nevertheless more controversial, in social debates too.

Reported patient resistance to Assistive Technologies (ATs) in the form “care-robots” reveals a threshold in perceptions of care. It is not that the care offered by such ATs is not competent or effective, but that it is not a specifically human encounter, one where the whole person’s welfare needs and vulnerabilities are encompassed: an encounter which meets the explicit and implicit care needs– material and emotional – experienced in the home and family context. We need to understand this, not to make better robots but better humans.

In my own recent research, “Specifically Human: Human Work and Care in the Age of Machines”, with Dr Marta Rocchi, we addressed this directly in arguing for a change in our current thinking about care, not framing it as a primarily economic problem but as an essentially human gift. In this way will see each succeeding generation ATs in their proper perspective, as extensions of the human need for and impulse to offer responsive care.

This helps inform our expectations when we imagine, or invest in the scenario in which machines might eventually be able to take over all our functional tasks including care. Human beings will always have the possibility of employing their energies and resources in creating the culture, making the homes, and making the choices that enable true human flourishing. Perhaps this will also be the right moment to (re)discover the essential, perennial feature of human work: knowing the world by caring for it.

In italics is adapted from the peer reviewed version of the following article: Bertolaso, M., & Rocchi, M. (2020). Specifically Human: Human Work and Care in the Age of Machines. Business Ethics: A European Review. https://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12281 which has been published in final form at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/beer.12281. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. Specifically Human: Human Work and Care in the Age of Machines Marta Bertolaso, University Campus Biomedico Marta Rocchi, DCU Business School.