Can AI Free Women from the Mental Load of Caregiving?

AI is disrupting the world of work. But can it disrupt gender inequality at home?The rise of “Care AI” offers up a tantalizing vision, one in which the never-ending work of managing family life—the anticipating, planning, caretaking, troubleshooting, worrying, and remembering—is outsourced to and supported by AI. Can’t keep up with emails and updates from your child’s school? An AI personal assistant can summarize communications, prioritize action items, and send reminders about back-to-school night. Worried something is off with your elderly father? An AI agent can track his medications, monitor for warning signs, and draft emails to his doctors. Techno-optimism hails AI’s transformative potential to solve major social problems and address unmet needs. These arguments highlight how Care AI can augment our social capacity to care, alleviating the care crisis, while reducing the caregiving burden on women. On the face of it, such technological developments are welcome news. Despite recent upticks in the amount of time men spend on unpaid household work, women still do significantly more. And that’s especially true when it comes to the mental load. In most households, it is women’s e...