I attended a conference on AI at Cambridge University last week and one of the most interesting points was why we were developing robots to look after old people – why not just use people? The answer could be that we are running out of people, especially younger people, as is the case in Japan, but this simply begs another question. Why don’t we either educate younger people on the importance of looking after older people, especially one’s own relatives, or simply conscript younger people into the NHS for short periods (a wonderfully provocative idea proposed by Prof. Ian Maconochie at an Imperial College London lecture the other week).