Significant efforts have been directed at understanding the implications of new technologies for the future of employment and training. In contrast, the future of unpaid domestic work has received little attention so far. DomesticAI is a major research project based at the University of Oxford that will:
Focusing on Japan and the UK, the project will use a range of expert and household survey techniques to estimate the automatability of key domestic tasks as well as the affordability and social acceptability of emerging smart domestic technologies. Based on these estimates we will build several plausible scenarios of the ways in which domestic workloads will change in the coming years and the implications of these changes for social issues such as gender inequality and the domestic life of the elderly.
Associate Professor in AI and Society
Project role: Principal Investigator
Ekaterina Hertog is an Associate Professor of AI and Society at Oxford Internet Institute and Institute for Ethics in AI. She studies how the rising digitalisation is reshaping private lives across the world.
Professor of Economic Sociology and Digital Social Research
Project role: Co-Investigator
Vili Lehdonvirta is Professor of Economic Sociology and Digital Social Research at the Oxford Internet Institute. He examines how digital technologies are shaping the organization of economic activities in society.
Former Postdoctoral Researcher
Lulu Shi is a sociologist working on projects investigating the intersection between society and technology. Her research interests include digital sociology, sociology of education, work and employment.
22 February 2023
Four in ten hours currently devoted to unpaid housework and care of children and other family members could be automated within the decade, according to research from the University of Oxford and Ochanomizu University.
