🤖 AI just declared senior living safe from disruption. My reaction wasn't relief.
Anthropic, the company behind Claude, just published a landmark study mapping which jobs AI will automate next.
Computer programmers: 75% of tasks covered. Customer service reps: 70%. Data entry: 67%.
Caregivers, nurses aides, care home staff: 0%.
I've spent 13 years building senior care platforms across Asia. And when I saw that number, my first thought wasn't "great, we're protected." It was: if our people are irreplaceable, why is it still so hard to convince talented people that care is a career worth choosing? Because here's what low AI exposure actually means in our sector. It doesn't mean low pressure. And it doesn't automatically translate into recognition, status, or career desirability. Society has a long habit of undervaluing the work it cannot replace. That's the real problem we need to solve.
Now flip it the other way.
The back office of senior care, documentation, scheduling, compliance, staffing logistics, is highly exposed to AI. That's exactly where we should be deploying it. Not to cut headcount. To return time to the people whose work no algorithm will ever replicate.
And there's one more thing the study hints at, that nobody in our sector is talking about. Millions of educated, higher-paid white-collar workers may face real disruption in the next few years. Some will need to reinvent entirely. Care is one of the few fields that will remain structurally, irreducibly human.
That's not a consolation prize. That could be the most meaningful redeployment story of the next decade, if we make care a profession people actually want to enter.
AI will automate the task. It will never automate the presence.
So here's my question: is caregiving undervalued because it's hard to automate, or is it hard to automate because it's been undervalued? Anthropic’s full study is worth reading even if senior living is the last thing on your mind — especially then.
First published on LinkedIn, March 9, 2026. View the original post.