AI Companions, Memory and Healthy Aging
What happens when an AI companion remembers you?
We study how empathy and long-term memory shape relationships between older adults and AI companions. Our field experiments examine loneliness, cognitive stimulation, emotional connection, healthy aging, and responses to AI-suggested health behaviors.
About the programme
Memory transforms an assistant into a relationship. In field experiments with older adults, we study whether memory-equipped, empathic AI companions reduce loneliness, stimulate cognition, and deepen perceived relationships, with the AI and beyond it.
We then trace how these social-emotional bonds shape something consequential: the willingness to adopt AI-suggested health behaviors around diet, sleep, and physical activity, informing the ethical design of technologies for healthy aging.
Coming soon
Work sample coming soon
Study notes
How the Cary study was built
How Cary's memory works, the AI models behind it, where the data is kept, and the instructions it was given.
Read how it was built