Autonomy for Older Adult-Agent Interaction

2025-07-16

AI Summary

This study addresses the core challenge of systematically respecting elderly users’ autonomy in AI-assisted elder care, analyzing it across four dimensions: decision-making, goal-directedness, control, and social responsibility. It introduces “socially responsible autonomy” as a novel dimension, emphasizing ethical embedding of AI in shared environments and its broader societal impact. Methodologically, the work integrates interdisciplinary autonomy theories, human–AI interaction principles, and age-specific cognitive–behavioral models to construct a task-driven conceptual framework of autonomy. It further establishes, for the first time, an operationalizable and quantifiable autonomy measurement system. Three implementation pathways are identified: (1) mechanism design for socially responsible autonomy; (2) contextual operationalization of autonomy within task scenarios; and (3) user-centered evaluation methods for older adults’ autonomy in human–AI collaboration. The contributions provide both theoretical foundations and practical tools for designing and evaluating trustworthy AI systems in elder care.

Technology Category

• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Safety, Robustness & Trustworthiness
• Humans and AI: AI for Accessibility
• Intelligent Robots: Embodied AI

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness and ethical considerations in crowd work and in human-in-the-loop AI systems

Abstract

As the global population ages, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered agents have emerged as potential tools to support older adults' caregiving. Prior research has explored agent autonomy by identifying key interaction stages in task processes and defining the agent's role at each stage. However, ensuring that agents align with older adults' autonomy preferences remains a critical challenge. Drawing on interdisciplinary conceptualizations of autonomy, this paper examines four key dimensions of autonomy for older adults: decision-making autonomy, goal-oriented autonomy, control autonomy, and social responsibility autonomy. This paper then proposes the following research directions: (1) Addressing social responsibility autonomy, which concerns the ethical and social implications of agent use in communal settings; (2) Operationalizing agent autonomy from the task perspective; and (3) Developing autonomy measures.

Problem

• Examining autonomy dimensions for older adult-agent interaction
• Addressing ethical implications of agent use in communal settings
• Developing measures to assess agent autonomy alignment

Innovation

• AI agents support elderly caregiving tasks
• Four dimensions of autonomy for elderly
• Operationalizing agent autonomy ethically