A study on the coexistence of Aging-Tech and Well-Aging in a super-aged society: Focusing on the Humanities and Gerontology of the Elderly

This study aims to improve quality of life for the elderly population and strengthen care services through age-friendly technology as an effective method to preemptively respond to a super-aged society. The aim is to provide an opportunity to consider artificial intelligence care robots without leaning towards either side, such as groundless blueprints for artificial intelligence care robots or vague fears caused by misinformation. In other words, wethis study explores how “Aging-Tech” and “Well-Aging” can coexist, avoiding bias to one side or being antagonistic, with a focus on either the perspective of AI technology or the humanities of old age. It is not a one-sided point of view but rather a fused point of view, and it is intended to reveal its positive role in how the two can maintain a relationship and be one be fused structure. In a situation where Korea is entering a super-aged structure, artificial intelligence robots, a type of “aging-tech,” do not focus on “anti-aging” as a negative meaning to reverse the trajectory of aging or the end of aging. The goal here is to look at how we can contribute to the humanities of the elderly while expanding the scope and target of the field of ‘caring.’ Some even refer to this as the starting point of the 5th industrial revolution. In other words, it is the 5th industrial revolution that will launch the era in which humans and robots cooperate for mutual benefit. In the 5th industrial revolution, robots are positioned as human companions and, thanks to that, the possibility of human ability, that is, the intellectual world, will be explored more than ever before in developing into a world different from the past before. In other words, through the convergence of well-aging and aging-tech, the elderly will no longer be alienated from the mainstream but rather will be able to glimpse the possibility that they will be spotlighted in a new revolution.