La Trobe University's 2025 Agnes Heller Lecture - Dr Barbara Barbosa Neves on AI, Care, and Ageing Futures

We are delighted to share that Dr Barbara Barbosa Neves will present the 2025 Agnes Heller Lecture, hosted by La Trobe's Sociology Program.

AI, Care, and Ageing Futures: Towards a Regenerative Sociology

Dr Barbara Barbosa Neves, Senior Horizon Fellow in AI, University of Sydney

From courtrooms to care homes, AI is remaking what it means to be old. On one hand, AI-driven hiring platforms are facing lawsuits for discriminating against older applicants. On the other, headlines celebrate robots to solve the so-called aged care crisis, alongside multimillion-dollar investments in chatbots that promise to cure loneliness among older people. These stories seem disconnected, but they are closely linked. They reflect how ageing and later life care are constructed as urgent problems to be fixed through technology. For this talk, I bring together different projects on AI and later life care – from surveys and interviews with providers and AI developers to analyses of company websites and datasets to train AI models – to interrogate how ageing and care are represented across stakeholders. Results expose deep contradictions in discussions about AI. Current debates swing between critique and celebration, yet reality is far more complex. In the face of AI’s risks, harms, and benefits, I introduce a regenerative lens to explore how AI-human care might foster fairer social systems. This approach recognises opportunities while confronting the social and environmental costs of AI’s expansion. It calls for equitable caring futures grounded in possibility rather than age-based deficit, and in socio-ecological sustainability rather than extractivism.

Barbara Barbosa Neves (PhD, FHEA, FRSA) is an award-winning sociologist of ageing and technology, specialising in loneliness and digital inequalities in later life. Her academic background bridges social sciences, computer science/human-computer interaction (HCI), and gerontology. She currently holds a prestigious Horizon Fellowship in AI at the University of Sydney, where she leads the AI Social Science theme at the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies. Before moving to Australia, Barbara was Associate Director of the Technologies for Aging Gracefully Lab in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, Canada. Her research examines how emerging technologies – like AI, VR, and robotics – can be co-designed to support older people (aged 65+), rather than exclude them. This includes those living in care homes and alone in the community.

Barbara’s recently awarded ARC Future Fellowship (2026-2029) will investigate the benefits, risks, and harms of social AI technologies – ranging from companion robots to affective chatbots – in addressing loneliness, isolation, and social exclusion among older people receiving formal aged care, both in residential facilities and in the community.

Please note the lecture will commence at 2pm, followed by a complimentary afternoon tea.

This is a free event, but registration is required.

Unfortunately this event cannot be livestreamed.

We look forward to welcoming you to La Trobe's City Campus!

For any queries please contact Matt Wade (m.wade@latrobe.edu.au)