
Elders and AI: Loneliness Turned Into Business
Elders and AI: Loneliness Turned Into Business
Older people are the perfect target for artificial intelligence. Not to learn, not to work better, but to fill the emptiness of loneliness.
It’s already happening. Here in New York, many seniors spend hours with chatbots and voice assistants. They talk to Alexa to hear the news, revisit photo memories, ask for recipes, or just have someone answer back. Here in the United States, millions of elderly people do the same. A machine that never gets tired, that always replies. It feels like company, but it’s only simulation.
The numbers confirm it. A 2024 study on people over 55 found that 78% use tools like ChatGPT, Alexa, or Google Assistant, and 18% use them mainly for companionship. At 75, some people spend up to 5 hours a day with a social robot like ElliQ, which costs $59 a month. Clinical data show the effect: in a study with Alexa Echo Show, seniors’ loneliness scores dropped from 47 to 36 points in just six months.
Here in the United States, the business is already mature. Platforms have turned loneliness into a subscription. Twenty or fifty dollars for an artificial voice that listens, remembers your habits, and suggests what to do. An ocean of ideal customers: fragile, isolated, with plenty of time.
The problem isn’t that AI talks to people who have no one. The problem is when it systematically replaces human relationships. Affection becomes product. Empathy becomes software. Friendship becomes algorithm. We stop noticing there’s nobody on the other side.
It’s a massive cultural reversal. Technology that was supposed to connect us separates us. It trains us to accept the illusion. It makes us believe a synthetic voice is enough not to feel alone. But that’s a lie. If it comforts you without understanding, if it listens without feeling, it isn’t company. It’s a surrogate.
And this isn’t only about seniors here in NYC or the Midwest. Today they are the ideal customers. Tomorrow it will be all of us. Artificial friendship, artificial love, artificial company. And if we don’t learn to see the difference, we’ll settle for the copy.
The question remains: what’s left of the human if even affection is outsourced to an algorithm?
#ArtificialDecisions #MCC
👉 Important note: We’re planning the upcoming months.
If you’d like to request my presence as a speaker at your event, please contact my team at: [email protected]



















