The AI of Ageing: The Future Is Being Coded. Who Is Being Left Behind?

On the International Day of Older Persons, join the Older Women’s Network NSW for our 2026 State Conference exploring how artificial intelligence is reshaping the lives of older women.

AI is not some distant, futuristic concern. It is already influencing how people are assessed for care, how health risks are identified, how services are funded and staffed, who is offered work, who can secure housing and how people are monitored in their own homes.

These systems are often presented as neutral and efficient. But technology is only as fair as the data, assumptions and priorities built into it.

Older women are already poorly represented in much of the data used to shape public policy and services. When AI systems are trained on data that has never counted older women properly, that invisibility does not disappear. It becomes automated - and embedded in systems that can be far harder to question than a human decision-maker.

What happens when the algorithm gets it wrong?

Who benefits from these new technologies, and who carries the risk?

Whose knowledge is trusted when systems are being designed?

Can AI help older women live safer, healthier and more independent lives, or will it deepen the inequalities they already face?

And how do we make sure that human judgement, dignity and accountability are not coded out of the systems on which we increasingly depend?

This important conference will bring together older women, researchers, frontline professionals, advocates and policy thinkers to examine where bias enters AI systems, and what must be done before today’s inequalities become tomorrow’s infrastructure.