Nearly 23 million working Americans are now caring for an older adult, surpassing for the first time the number caring for young children, and AI tools are starting to carry the coordination burden that falls on those workers during business hours.

AI is already handling assessments, monitoring and care coordination in long-term care settings, but the tools are only as good as the data behind them, and older adults remain underrepresented in the training sets.

Brookings puts AI at the center of a new model for aging at home, where medication reminders, daily check-ins, and care navigation extend the reach of a direct care workforce that cannot grow fast enough to meet demand.

Most people do not think about elder care until they have to. Then they find out how expensive it is, how hard to access, and how much of it falls on whoever is closest. Artificial intelligence agents are beginning to take on parts of that burden, and the results are just starting to come in.

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Seven in 10 individuals who reach the age of 65 will at some point have a significant need for long-term services and supports, according to a Brookings Institution analysis . The availability of family members to provide informal care is declining as the working-age population shrinks relative to the population that needs care. AI agents are arriving not as a replacement for human caregivers but as a structural response to a system that is running out of capacity.

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