SOGOLAS Research Seminar: Artificial Intelligence and Care Work

What happens when the work of 24-hour caregiving is partially or fully handed over  Artificial Intelligence (AI)? This presentation examines how care work is being transformed in settings where caregivers often live with the people they support and perform continuous, intimate, and physically demanding tasks. These tasks include feeding, hygiene, mobility assistance, supervision, and emotional support — forms of labor that are often invisible but essential. Importantly, this work is often carried out by women, who are frequently underpaid, undervalued, and, in many cases, migrant women, many of whom also have elderly relatives or children with care needs in their home country. The talk also looks at assistive technologies in practical terms: smart watches can monitor health and alert caregivers, lifting devices help with movement and transfers, automated feeding and hygiene supports assist with basic bodily care, and social robots are designed to offer companionship or interaction. Rather than treating these tools as neutral innovations, I approach them as technologies that can reorganize dependence, responsibility, and the boundaries between human support and machine assistance. The presentation asks a pressing question: when do these technologies genuinely support care, and when do they shift, obscure, or even intensify the burdens of those who provide it? Focusing on 24-hour care as a site of extreme vulnerability and inequality, the talk connects AI to broader debates about dignity, labor, autonomy, and justice.

Presenter: Dr. Anna Ujlaki (PhD)

Affiliation: Eötvös Lóránd University (ELTE), Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Human Rights and Politics

ELTE Centre for Social Sciences, Institute for Political Science

Ujlaki Anna is an assistant professor at Eötvös Lóránd University, Budapest, Hungary. She is also a research fellow at the ELTE Centre for Social Sciences. She is a political theorist, her research fields include feminism and gender, migration, and artificial intelligence.

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