Abstract

As facility-centred policies have become apparent to have limitations, there has been a societal demand for a paradigm shift towards integrated community care. This transition is being formalised through the implementation of so-called “smart care” policies, being integrated with strategies for the advancement of the digital/AI industries. This study critically examines how these digital/AI care policies, rather than reflecting on the ethics, justice, and relational dimensions of care, are reiterating and even elevating the existing market-centered paradigm, prioritising cost reduction, efficiency, profitability, and labour productivity. Digital/AI care has eroded three core layers of relational justice, including temporality, subjectivity, and responsibility. By prioritizing outcomes and fostering the belief that the care process can be compressed, automated, and streamlined, these technologies bypass the ‘temporality of the process’ that is indispensable for relational engagement. The intervention of digital technology and artificial intelligence (AI) reduces the mutual ‘subjectivity’ of the human actors involved in the care relationship to mere technological objects. Consequently, algorithmic and AI-driven decision-making serves to conceal the ‘responsibility’ of states and corporations within the opacity of the technical system. Rather than merely being dismantled through digital mediation, these dimensions are reorganized as the core mechanisms that constitute ‘care governmentality.’ Digital/AI care policies has been shown to restrict the social discourse on care to matters pertaining to the adoption, development and investment of digital technologies. This is, in essence, a manifestation of a capitalist epistemology, which hinders the ability to address fundamental issues. In conclusion, this paper critiques the perspective of digital/AI care policies, which regard technology as neutral and instrumental, effectively operating as a form of governmentality. The text puts forward the argument that there should be a shift towards an ethics that focuses on the relational dimension of care.