The Mixture Is the Job

Asked which sector stands to benefit the most from AI, Emad Mostaque did not say finance or software. He said air conditioning, elder care and child care. On elder care he was specific. "With a mixture of humans and robots, the elder care experience can be transformed."

Mostaque is one of the biggest thinkers on the future we have, and he has followed that future from finance to AI. I was in the room in Los Angeles on September 25 when he took the stage, which is part of why his answer here has stayed with me.

Read the sentence again and notice the word he chose. He said a mixture of humans and robots. He did not say robots.

That matters at a kitchen table. The robot half of his sentence is years from most homes, and the ones on sale today mostly talk, remind and call for help. The human half is the only half a family can hire this month. The aide, the neighbor, the sister two states away, and the software that hands each of them an hour back.

So the opportunity he is pointing at is not a machine that replaces the daughter. It is the work of deciding who does what, which tool covers which gap, and what still needs a person in the room. That work is already here, and somebody in every family is doing it, usually alone and usually at night.