Most people do not think about elder care until they have to. Then they find out how expensive it is, how hard to access, and how much of it falls on whoever is closest. Artificial intelligence agents are beginning to take on parts of that burden, and the results are just starting to come in.
Seven in 10 individuals who reach the age of 65 will at some point have a significant need for long-term services and supports, according to a Brookings Institution analysis. The availability of family members to provide informal care is declining as the working-age population shrinks relative to the population that needs care. AI agents are arriving not as a replacement for human caregivers but as a structural response to a system that is running out of capacity.
What AI Is Already Doing Inside Long-Term Care
An AARP Public Policy Institute report published in April maps the early deployment of AI across long-term care settings and identifies five areas where tools are already in use: assessments, diagnosis and treatment support, family caregiver assistance, monitoring and care navigation. Current tools are largely in pilot stages, focused on streamlining administrative tasks, supporting clinical decision-making, and managing complex information.
The report says AI holds real promise for reducing strain on family caregivers and the direct care workforce. The most effective deployments are those designed to supplement rather than replace existing care relationships. The report also notes that older adults, people with disabilities, and racially and ethnically diverse communities remain underrepresented in the datasets used to train these tools, and that closing those data gaps will make the tools more accurate and more equitable over time.
The report highlights that agentic AI systems require intentional human oversight, particularly for self-correcting systems that can autonomously execute tasks across extended workflows. Building that oversight in from the start, the report argues, is what separates deployments that build trust from those that erode it.
Workforce Carrying Elder Care Is Already at the Breaking Point
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A Harvard Business Review article reports that for the first time in U.S. history, the number of working adults providing care to an older adult, nearly 23 million, has surpassed the number providing care to preschool children, 21 million. Elder caregivers now make up 14% of the workforce, and that share is growing.
The article says annual long-term care costs average $104,000 for in-facility care and $69,000 for in-home situations. The economic case for employer support is straightforward: employees managing care responsibilities without support show measurable drops in productivity and retention. Microsoft, AbbVie, and others have begun offering eldercare benefits and leave policies, and the article argues the business case for doing so is stronger than most employers realize.
AI tools that help employees navigate care coordination, track a family member’s medications, or communicate with care teams reduce the burden that is now routinely falling on working adults during business hours. Supporting elder caregivers improves productivity, retention, recruitment and diversity, and AI is starting to make that support more accessible and more scalable than it has ever been.
AI Is the Bridge Between What Elder Care Needs and What Exists
A Brookings Institution article frames the long-term care challenge as one of the most consequential domestic policy questions of the next decade. One in 5 U.S. residents over age 65 cannot carry out at least one activity of daily living. For those over 85, the fastest-growing age group, that ratio is nearly 2 in 5.
The article identifies AI and generative AI as a meaningful near-term tool for providing support, companionship and care coordination for the elderly at scale. Medication reminders, daily check-ins, family communication, and care navigation are all functions where AI agents can extend the reach of a direct care workforce that is already stretched thin. The article notes that most older Americans prefer to remain at home, and AI is among the most promising tools for making that preference sustainable as care needs intensify.
The article also makes clear that technology alone is not the complete answer. AI extends the reach of the system, but the system still needs to be funded, staffed and governed. The article proposes a new home care benefit within Medicare as the policy foundation. The technology and the policy work together, the article argues, or neither works well enough to matter at scale.
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