Will artificial intelligence reduce the cost for long-term care?

[smitcat]

Perhaps the more applicable question for the shorter term and most folks would be:
Will the near term technology advances (including AI) replace my job or lower earnings potential?

I agree that that is by far the more relevant question people should be asking themselves today. Personally, my view is that the threat of widespread job loss due to technology is not as immediate or severe as many have made it out to be.

As evidence of this, look at what happened in the field of agriculture. 50-75% of the population once worked in that space. In most of the developed world, that number has dropped to under 5%. Yet we haven't seen the 45-70% whose jobs were replaced become unemployed. Rather, countless new jobs have been created along the way. Replacing those jobs due to technology was a great advancement for mankind. Why should we expect anything different now? "This time is different" seems very suspect to me.



In a real way, people's jobs have been at risk of being eliminated due to technological advances for hundreds of years. What we've seen in more recent times is the technological process speeding up, forcing people to retool themselves and acquire new skills. Think of the people who got college degrees in operating computers with punch cards.

Consequently, it would probably behoove many to ask themselves if their jobs could easily be replaced by a computer program.

"What we've seen in more recent times is the technological process speeding up, forcing people to retool themselves and acquire new skills."
I think this is the key - while I do not share your view that change will continue at the same rate.
We have re-tooled our careers on two occasions , I see very few folks who attempt to retool once.

[willthrill81]

I think this is the key - while I do not share your view that change will continue at the same rate.

I'm not claiming that technology and jobs aren't changing faster today than they were 100 years ago, because they obviously are. But what I am saying is that the issue of technology eliminating human jobs is an old one that has not yet led to rampant unemployment.

[smitcat]

I think this is the key - while I do not share your view that change will continue at the same rate.

I'm not claiming that technology and jobs aren't changing faster today than they were 100 years ago, because they obviously are. But what I am saying is that the issue of technology eliminating human jobs is an old one that has not yet led to rampant unemployment.

Perhaps not with your area or the folks that you know.

[TN_Boy]

Some friends I have that do some work in that space, they feel like they understand the disease better and feel some major breakthroughs will arrive. I don't mean like in the immediate future, but the idea of effective treatments that either prevent or dramatically help some forms of it it in like 10+ years seems reasonable to me. I don't think though it's going to be "cured" like polio, but look at something like HIV/AIDS. It's not "cured" but we thought people like Magic Johnson would not comfortably live into their old age.

Meanwhile, just making a robot "walk" like a human is an enormous feat, I find it more far-fetched that some sort of solution like that arrives that could do the delicate tasks of being a caregiver than curtailing what puts a lot of people in places like that.

Viruses are very different from degenerative neurological diseases. I don't think a cure or an effective treatment has ever been found for any of these neurological diseases, so I see no reason for optimism on the Alzheimer's front, but I hope I'm wrong.

There's already treatments that slow down the production of the amyloid plague formation and how the brain reacts to it. They've also used these treatments in plague formation around organs like the heart that make an enormous difference. I could see treatments beings something like Lipitor/statins where you take it and it helps reduce the chance of having that plague build up.

It's probably not something on the horizon where someone who already is deep into Alzheimers is going to be cured (just like someone who has AIDS isn't probably going to take a pill and not have it anymore) but I see definitely could see a treatment in my lifetime where it could be reduced to where it keeps a lot of people out of of these facilities.

I just know when my grandmother had to go to a facility, she was otherwise quite healthy, but her brain was not, started doing dangerous things like wandering her neighborhood. I think that probably describes a lot of people that have to go to places like that for long term care. If you could dramatically slow that down, it would make a big difference.

"There's already treatments that slow down the production of the amyloid plague formation and how the brain reacts to it. "

? But those treatments haven't been shown to actually, like, help right?

I realize there is a thought that maybe if you start really early with this sort of treatments (before symptoms develop) that it might help, but from what I read, that is more wishful thinking than anything else. No hard evidence yet. Just a failure of all clinical trials thus far .....

[cadreamer2015]

If you want to see the future in automation of long-term care, I suggest you should look at Japan. Japan is further ahead of the U.S. in the aging of their population. Culturally and legally Japan is very unfriendly for immigration, which affects both the potential labor supply in total and low wage manual labor as is prevalent in long-term care settings. As one result, Japan has put a lot of research into robotics. I’m not certain of the connection between AI per se and robotics, but I suppose AI could make robots smarter.

I’m no expert on the current use of technology in long-term care in Japan, but if there is a future for technology to dramatically reduce costs of long-term care I would expect to see it first in Japan. Personally, I don’t expect to have robots changing my diaper 25 years from now, but you never know.

[Workable Goblin]

I find this question somewhat silly, but for different reasons than most of the other posters. What I think of is the spectrum of possible economic outcomes from wide deployment of artificial intelligence; maybe it results in the creation of a utopian society where all diseases have been cured by superintelligent AIs and there isn't any such thing as long-term care. Or maybe it results in the creation of Skynet, and no one worries about affording long-term care any longer because everyone is dead. Or maybe it merely supercharges the economy and whether or not it actually reduces the cost is moot because pretty much everyone is wealthy enough to afford it. Or maybe it ends up supplanting workers in nearly all economic areas and whether or not long-term care is cheaper is irrelevant because no one but the super-wealthy people who own the AIs can actually afford to buy anything.

And those are just the four most popular scenarios I can think of off the top of my head; I'm sure if you thought harder you could come up with others. Speculating about whether robotics and artificial intelligence will advance enough to greatly alter the economy in the foreseeable future (say, sometime this century, even if most of the people on this board are probably going to be dead in that timeframe) doesn't seem particularly actionable or useful to me.

[willthrill81]

I think this is the key - while I do not share your view that change will continue at the same rate.

I'm not claiming that technology and jobs aren't changing faster today than they were 100 years ago, because they obviously are. But what I am saying is that the issue of technology eliminating human jobs is an old one that has not yet led to rampant unemployment.

Perhaps not with your area or the folks that you know.

Specific sectors of the economy may suddenly deal with significant unemployment, and perhaps that's what you're referencing. I don't know because you have not said so.

[smitcat]

I think this is the key - while I do not share your view that change will continue at the same rate.

I'm not claiming that technology and jobs aren't changing faster today than they were 100 years ago, because they obviously are. But what I am saying is that the issue of technology eliminating human jobs is an old one that has not yet led to rampant unemployment.

Perhaps not with your area or the folks that you know.

Specific sectors of the economy may suddenly deal with significant unemployment, and perhaps that's what you're referencing. I don't know because you have not said so.

Factory workers, publishing, communication operators, stock market support, computer services , medical assisstants, etc - to name a few.

[illumination]

Some friends I have that do some work in that space, they feel like they understand the disease better and feel some major breakthroughs will arrive. I don't mean like in the immediate future, but the idea of effective treatments that either prevent or dramatically help some forms of it it in like 10+ years seems reasonable to me. I don't think though it's going to be "cured" like polio, but look at something like HIV/AIDS. It's not "cured" but we thought people like Magic Johnson would not comfortably live into their old age.

Meanwhile, just making a robot "walk" like a human is an enormous feat, I find it more far-fetched that some sort of solution like that arrives that could do the delicate tasks of being a caregiver than curtailing what puts a lot of people in places like that.

Viruses are very different from degenerative neurological diseases. I don't think a cure or an effective treatment has ever been found for any of these neurological diseases, so I see no reason for optimism on the Alzheimer's front, but I hope I'm wrong.

There's already treatments that slow down the production of the amyloid plague formation and how the brain reacts to it. They've also used these treatments in plague formation around organs like the heart that make an enormous difference. I could see treatments beings something like Lipitor/statins where you take it and it helps reduce the chance of having that plague build up.

It's probably not something on the horizon where someone who already is deep into Alzheimers is going to be cured (just like someone who has AIDS isn't probably going to take a pill and not have it anymore) but I see definitely could see a treatment in my lifetime where it could be reduced to where it keeps a lot of people out of of these facilities.

I just know when my grandmother had to go to a facility, she was otherwise quite healthy, but her brain was not, started doing dangerous things like wandering her neighborhood. I think that probably describes a lot of people that have to go to places like that for long term care. If you could dramatically slow that down, it would make a big difference.

"There's already treatments that slow down the production of the amyloid plague formation and how the brain reacts to it. "

? But those treatments haven't been shown to actually, like, help right?

I realize there is a thought that maybe if you start really early with this sort of treatments (before symptoms develop) that it might help, but from what I read, that is more wishful thinking than anything else. No hard evidence yet. Just a failure of all clinical trials thus far .....

There's a slew of medications that slow down the symptoms, there isn't anything that can reverse the plague yet, that's sort of the Holy Grail.

But keeping the plague from developing before it gets there I would say could be a game changer for people that don't have it yet.

I still think these developments are far closer than A.I. making a big impact on long term care. I guess we'll have to just wait and see.

[randomguy]

As far as this being a nightmare of a future, which case do you want for your loved ones
a) you are dependant on waiting for someone to come and move you to the bathroom, feed your, or to take you to visit a friend. You are the mercy of their availability
b) if you want to go to the bathroom, eat a meal, or visit a friend , your local robot instantly reacts to your desires. You still control your life

A sounds more like a nightmare to me than B.

You are assuming that the robots would be in plentiful supply at the facility and instantly available. In reality, the facility will calculate how few robots they need to purchase in order to meet some predetermined response time that may or may not be better than what they have with human staff.

I am just pointing out that there are multiple future outcomes. Maybe these robots end up costing 10k and everyone gets one. Maybe they are 500k, and they get as few as possible. Maybe you end up in the middle. How exactly it plays out isn't something we can figure out now.

[randomguy]

Think about how low of IQ you need to be able to drive and how disruptive it will be if cars are able to do it.

I don't know exactly what IQ measures, but it seems to me that a lot of brain power is needed to be able to drive and maybe we just don't always realize it. You are constantly encountering potentially new situations - configuration of vehicles around you, lighting conditions, weather conditions, road conditions, strange noise from your car, passenger conversation, etc. I don't think AI is any where near being able to handle this.

As I've joked before, I can just hear it now: Recommended Car OS update 3.2.5: this update fixes a bug in which the windshield wipers would come on instead of the brakes being applied in certain emergency situations.

Computers and humans do better at different IQ tasks. 75 years ago people would have said that chess and go (or heck filling out your tax forms) are high IQ activities. We now have computers that do them better than any human. Some other tasks like vision aren't things we think of high IQ but historically those have been hard tasks for computers. The latest AI techniques are expanding into those tasks which computers used to struggle with. How far the current techniques will go is hard to say. You can compare the self driving cars of the Darpa grand challenge of 2004 to now to see how far we have come. The question is can they keep improving and get to the finish line or will we stall out before a usable product. Time will tell.

[randomguy]

The nightmare I'm referring to relates to the law. When it comes to people driving cars, it's relatively easy to place the legal blame on the driver at fault. But when someone, perhaps multiple entities working in conjunction, other than the owner of the vehicle is not the one operating the vehicle, it will become a huge legal issue. This isn't just my take; listen to Steve Lehto, an attorney with decades of experience in lemon law for automobiles, discuss it.

If everything works correctly, self-driving cars would be a huge boon to society, saving thousands of lives every year and potentially reducing traffic congestion by orders of magnitude in some situations. If everything works correctly, a robot who can cost effectively administer LTC could enable many individuals, including those with limited resources, to live their lives as they want. But there are still lots of hurdles, not just legal issues, with self-driving cars, and we're not even close to a LTC robot.

It is only a nightmare because we don't have precedent about how to handle these cases. We decide that you sue the driver. You don't sue the maker for not putting better brakes on the car. After a half dozen lawsuits we will figure out who is liable and they costs will get distributed. If we decide that Tesla is liable for autopilot crashes, they will figure out their liability is 1k/year and they will charge owners that much to use the feature. Compared to the difficulty of actually building these robots, the legal stuff is pretty easy to solve.

The tough part will be for people to get comfortable with computer drivers killing people. We are ok with people killing people by driving cars. But having a machine do the killing isn't something we are used to yet.

[goodenyou]

AI may decide that prolonging your life is not worth it. It may be not a good use of resources. It will "solve" the dilemma that human intelligence cannot "solve". Once it is acceptable to defer to AI for decisions, the cost of long term care will be reduced. It may not be pretty though.

[willthrill81]

The nightmare I'm referring to relates to the law. When it comes to people driving cars, it's relatively easy to place the legal blame on the driver at fault. But when someone, perhaps multiple entities working in conjunction, other than the owner of the vehicle is not the one operating the vehicle, it will become a huge legal issue. This isn't just my take; listen to Steve Lehto, an attorney with decades of experience in lemon law for automobiles, discuss it.

If everything works correctly, self-driving cars would be a huge boon to society, saving thousands of lives every year and potentially reducing traffic congestion by orders of magnitude in some situations. If everything works correctly, a robot who can cost effectively administer LTC could enable many individuals, including those with limited resources, to live their lives as they want. But there are still lots of hurdles, not just legal issues, with self-driving cars, and we're not even close to a LTC robot.

It is only a nightmare because we don't have precedent about how to handle these cases. We decide that you sue the driver. You don't sue the maker for not putting better brakes on the car. After a half dozen lawsuits we will figure out who is liable and they costs will get distributed. If we decide that Tesla is liable for autopilot crashes, they will figure out their liability is 1k/year and they will charge owners that much to use the feature. Compared to the difficulty of actually building these robots, the legal stuff is pretty easy to solve.

The tough part will be for people to get comfortable with computer drivers killing people. We are ok with people killing people by driving cars. But having a machine do the killing isn't something we are used to yet.

I'm not saying that the problem will be unsolvable, only that there will be a major problem, and it does not seem to have any easy answers.

Perhaps you're right and the attorney I cited is wrong. But George Clason's advice comes to my mind.

"And do you still take the advice of brick makers?”
"About brick making they give good advice,” I retorted.

- The Richest Man in Babylon

[TN_Boy]

Some friends I have that do some work in that space, they feel like they understand the disease better and feel some major breakthroughs will arrive. I don't mean like in the immediate future, but the idea of effective treatments that either prevent or dramatically help some forms of it it in like 10+ years seems reasonable to me. I don't think though it's going to be "cured" like polio, but look at something like HIV/AIDS. It's not "cured" but we thought people like Magic Johnson would not comfortably live into their old age.

Meanwhile, just making a robot "walk" like a human is an enormous feat, I find it more far-fetched that some sort of solution like that arrives that could do the delicate tasks of being a caregiver than curtailing what puts a lot of people in places like that.

Viruses are very different from degenerative neurological diseases. I don't think a cure or an effective treatment has ever been found for any of these neurological diseases, so I see no reason for optimism on the Alzheimer's front, but I hope I'm wrong.

There's already treatments that slow down the production of the amyloid plague formation and how the brain reacts to it. They've also used these treatments in plague formation around organs like the heart that make an enormous difference. I could see treatments beings something like Lipitor/statins where you take it and it helps reduce the chance of having that plague build up.

It's probably not something on the horizon where someone who already is deep into Alzheimers is going to be cured (just like someone who has AIDS isn't probably going to take a pill and not have it anymore) but I see definitely could see a treatment in my lifetime where it could be reduced to where it keeps a lot of people out of of these facilities.

I just know when my grandmother had to go to a facility, she was otherwise quite healthy, but her brain was not, started doing dangerous things like wandering her neighborhood. I think that probably describes a lot of people that have to go to places like that for long term care. If you could dramatically slow that down, it would make a big difference.

"There's already treatments that slow down the production of the amyloid plague formation and how the brain reacts to it. "

? But those treatments haven't been shown to actually, like, help right?

I realize there is a thought that maybe if you start really early with this sort of treatments (before symptoms develop) that it might help, but from what I read, that is more wishful thinking than anything else. No hard evidence yet. Just a failure of all clinical trials thus far .....

There's a slew of medications that slow down the symptoms, there isn't anything that can reverse the plague yet, that's sort of the Holy Grail.

But keeping the plague from developing before it gets there I would say could be a game changer for people that don't have it yet.

I still think these developments are far closer than A.I. making a big impact on long term care. I guess we'll have to just wait and see.

Certainly preventing or curing Alzheimers (and ideally the other dementias) would have a huge impact on long term care costs.

But as you correctly said above, while there are some medications that may help alleviate Alzheimer symptoms, we currently have nothing that even slows the progression of the disease itself, much less reverse or cure it.

I've been reading about "advances" in Alzheimer research for over a decade now, and I'm not too impressed. Not to denigrate the researchers; obviously this is a very hard problem. But we keep trying drugs that fail, and people thought they "understood" the disease before.

As a layperson, I'm skeptical the amyloid hypothesis is correct; you'd think they would have come up with at least some limited success by now, the idea has been around for 25 years. They are now doing trials with younger people who don't have Alzheimer's to prove or disprove the theory that if you just go after the amyloid early enough it will help.

Here's a nice summary about the amyloid hypothesis and some other theories: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05719-4

That said, I sure hope your friends are right!

[illumination]

Viruses are very different from degenerative neurological diseases. I don't think a cure or an effective treatment has ever been found for any of these neurological diseases, so I see no reason for optimism on the Alzheimer's front, but I hope I'm wrong.

There's already treatments that slow down the production of the amyloid plague formation and how the brain reacts to it. They've also used these treatments in plague formation around organs like the heart that make an enormous difference. I could see treatments beings something like Lipitor/statins where you take it and it helps reduce the chance of having that plague build up.

It's probably not something on the horizon where someone who already is deep into Alzheimers is going to be cured (just like someone who has AIDS isn't probably going to take a pill and not have it anymore) but I see definitely could see a treatment in my lifetime where it could be reduced to where it keeps a lot of people out of of these facilities.

I just know when my grandmother had to go to a facility, she was otherwise quite healthy, but her brain was not, started doing dangerous things like wandering her neighborhood. I think that probably describes a lot of people that have to go to places like that for long term care. If you could dramatically slow that down, it would make a big difference.

"There's already treatments that slow down the production of the amyloid plague formation and how the brain reacts to it. "

? But those treatments haven't been shown to actually, like, help right?

I realize there is a thought that maybe if you start really early with this sort of treatments (before symptoms develop) that it might help, but from what I read, that is more wishful thinking than anything else. No hard evidence yet. Just a failure of all clinical trials thus far .....

There's a slew of medications that slow down the symptoms, there isn't anything that can reverse the plague yet, that's sort of the Holy Grail.

But keeping the plague from developing before it gets there I would say could be a game changer for people that don't have it yet.

I still think these developments are far closer than A.I. making a big impact on long term care. I guess we'll have to just wait and see.

Certainly preventing or curing Alzheimers (and ideally the other dementias) would have a huge impact on long term care costs.

But as you correctly said above, while there are some medications that may help alleviate Alzheimer symptoms, we currently have nothing that even slows the progression of the disease itself, much less reverse or cure it.

I've been reading about "advances" in Alzheimer research for over a decade now, and I'm not too impressed. Not to denigrate the researchers; obviously this is a very hard problem. But we keep trying drugs that fail, and people thought they "understood" the disease before.

As a layperson, I'm skeptical the amyloid hypothesis is correct; you'd think they would have come up with at least some limited success by now, the idea has been around for 25 years. They are now doing trials with younger people who don't have Alzheimer's to prove or disprove the theory that if you just go after the amyloid early enough it will help.

Here's a nice summary about the amyloid hypothesis and some other theories: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05719-4

That said, I sure hope your friends are right!

You really seem to be against the idea that we will ever make any progress with Alzheimers or dementia. Did you get burned on some Biotech stock or something?

[TN_Boy]

There's already treatments that slow down the production of the amyloid plague formation and how the brain reacts to it. They've also used these treatments in plague formation around organs like the heart that make an enormous difference. I could see treatments beings something like Lipitor/statins where you take it and it helps reduce the chance of having that plague build up.

It's probably not something on the horizon where someone who already is deep into Alzheimers is going to be cured (just like someone who has AIDS isn't probably going to take a pill and not have it anymore) but I see definitely could see a treatment in my lifetime where it could be reduced to where it keeps a lot of people out of of these facilities.

I just know when my grandmother had to go to a facility, she was otherwise quite healthy, but her brain was not, started doing dangerous things like wandering her neighborhood. I think that probably describes a lot of people that have to go to places like that for long term care. If you could dramatically slow that down, it would make a big difference.

"There's already treatments that slow down the production of the amyloid plague formation and how the brain reacts to it. "

? But those treatments haven't been shown to actually, like, help right?

I realize there is a thought that maybe if you start really early with this sort of treatments (before symptoms develop) that it might help, but from what I read, that is more wishful thinking than anything else. No hard evidence yet. Just a failure of all clinical trials thus far .....

There's a slew of medications that slow down the symptoms, there isn't anything that can reverse the plague yet, that's sort of the Holy Grail.

But keeping the plague from developing before it gets there I would say could be a game changer for people that don't have it yet.

I still think these developments are far closer than A.I. making a big impact on long term care. I guess we'll have to just wait and see.

Certainly preventing or curing Alzheimers (and ideally the other dementias) would have a huge impact on long term care costs.

But as you correctly said above, while there are some medications that may help alleviate Alzheimer symptoms, we currently have nothing that even slows the progression of the disease itself, much less reverse or cure it.

I've been reading about "advances" in Alzheimer research for over a decade now, and I'm not too impressed. Not to denigrate the researchers; obviously this is a very hard problem. But we keep trying drugs that fail, and people thought they "understood" the disease before.

As a layperson, I'm skeptical the amyloid hypothesis is correct; you'd think they would have come up with at least some limited success by now, the idea has been around for 25 years. They are now doing trials with younger people who don't have Alzheimer's to prove or disprove the theory that if you just go after the amyloid early enough it will help.

Here's a nice summary about the amyloid hypothesis and some other theories: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05719-4

That said, I sure hope your friends are right!

You really seem to be against the idea that we will ever make any progress with Alzheimers or dementia. Did you get burned on some Biotech stock or something?

Chuckle. No biotech stock mishaps. My dismal outlook on Alzheimer's research is pretty well summed up by the information in the article I linked. Most of the research thus far has focused on the amyloid hypothesis. That is, most trials, and I think most of the research money. (This is not news, there have been reports/articles pointing out the lack of progress in this approach for years).

Now maybe the idea that drugs taken for years before symptoms* develop will pan out and we'll have something. But if that idea fails, we are left with the fact that work based on the amyloid hypothesis has resulted in 0 useful treatments. 0 is very bad. You'd think if this was the right idea there would have been successes. Even minor ones. Nope, 100% complete failure. Given the number of drug trials, this should give anyone pause.

But every year some new ideas come out and hopefully some of them will prove fruitful.

The other part of my cynicism (mind you, I"d rather be wrong on this ....) is based on cancer research. We've been spending a lot of money fighting cancer a long time. And there have been some big successes (unlike Alzheimer's). But if you get pancreatic cancer, for example, you should be sure your affairs are in order, because the five year survival rate hasn't moved much and it's really low.

* interestingly, you mentioned statins, in fact studies show that over a larger population, statins provide very minimal increases in average lifespan extension (i.e. death by all causes). Most people taking statins will live little, if any, longer than if they had never taken them. A rather small subset of people will get a more significant benefit.

[Ferdinand2014]

Some friends I have that do some work in that space, they feel like they understand the disease better and feel some major breakthroughs will arrive. I don't mean like in the immediate future, but the idea of effective treatments that either prevent or dramatically help some forms of it it in like 10+ years seems reasonable to me. I don't think though it's going to be "cured" like polio, but look at something like HIV/AIDS. It's not "cured" but we thought people like Magic Johnson would not comfortably live into their old age.

Meanwhile, just making a robot "walk" like a human is an enormous feat, I find it more far-fetched that some sort of solution like that arrives that could do the delicate tasks of being a caregiver than curtailing what puts a lot of people in places like that.

Viruses are very different from degenerative neurological diseases. I don't think a cure or an effective treatment has ever been found for any of these neurological diseases, so I see no reason for optimism on the Alzheimer's front, but I hope I'm wrong.

There's already treatments that slow down the production of the amyloid plague formation and how the brain reacts to it. They've also used these treatments in plague formation around organs like the heart that make an enormous difference. I could see treatments beings something like Lipitor/statins where you take it and it helps reduce the chance of having that plague build up.

It's probably not something on the horizon where someone who already is deep into Alzheimers is going to be cured (just like someone who has AIDS isn't probably going to take a pill and not have it anymore) but I see definitely could see a treatment in my lifetime where it could be reduced to where it keeps a lot of people out of of these facilities.

I just know when my grandmother had to go to a facility, she was otherwise quite healthy, but her brain was not, started doing dangerous things like wandering her neighborhood. I think that probably describes a lot of people that have to go to places like that for long term care. If you could dramatically slow that down, it would make a big difference.

"There's already treatments that slow down the production of the amyloid plague formation and how the brain reacts to it. "

? But those treatments haven't been shown to actually, like, help right?

I realize there is a thought that maybe if you start really early with this sort of treatments (before symptoms develop) that it might help, but from what I read, that is more wishful thinking than anything else. No hard evidence yet. Just a failure of all clinical trials thus far .....

It's plaque. There are no current medications available that slow down the progression of Alzheimers, Lewy body or other non vascular dementia's.

[flah]

AI may decide that prolonging your life is not worth it. It may be not a good use of resources. It will "solve" the dilemma that human intelligence cannot "solve". Once it is acceptable to defer to AI for decisions, the cost of long term care will be reduced. It may not be pretty though.

OTOH if AI starts to get wise to the effect of compounding interest in Roth IRAs, AI will make every effort to keep you alive as long as possible. You may not like it though.