So it’s time to correct that misconception, and fast. There is an increasingly urgent need to overhaul a sector many of us will come to rely on in later lives and, whether we like it or not, automation is the hero and not the villain of this piece.

The UK’s social care sector is facing may of the same crushing pressures that are being inflicted on the NHS, with familiar rising costs and falling funding nixing any real advancements. One in 10 older people is likely to pay more than £100,000 for their social care needs over their lifetime, and a tightening of criteria for receiving publicly funded care led to 400,000 fewer people receiving state-funded care between 2012/13 than in 2009/10, according to the Health Foundation, a healthcare policy charity.

Given the UK’s gradually increasing ageing population (18 per cent is aged 65 or over), our need for social care is only going to intensify – and the issue is made more acute by the fact that an average of 900 care workers per day are estimated to being leaving the profession. According to the National Audit Office the exodus is due to the work’s low wages and tough conditions. And it’s not just a retention problem – there’s also a severe lack of new workers joining the profession.

Enter automation. The application of AI, robotics and other technologies to the sector could help to narrow dramatically the gap between costs and revenue (which is projected to reach £2.1bn by 2019/20) and to relieve human staff of certain menial or physically demanding tasks, freeing up their time for face-to-face care of patients.

The health and social care sector has been earmarked by Deloitte as the third most vulnerable industry to rapid advances in technology, behind wholesale and retail, and transportation and storage, with some 1.3m jobs at high risk in the UK. But the advent of automation isn’t about replacing human staff with robots. Just as within the wider health sector, there will always be a clear need for the calm, reassuring and caring bedside manner of professional humans, particularly when it comes to caring for patients with complex needs.

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That high degree of social and emotional intelligence is still beyond machines, and, some experts argue, always will be. Instead, automation can help with tackling everything else, from tedious tasks such as budgeting and record-filing to more significant tasks such as monitoring patients more closely than humans can, projecting future health risks and assuming physically strenuous roles such as lifting; they don’t need paying, rarely make mistakes and don’t get tired.

They’re well ahead of us in Japan, which is facing a predicted shortfall of 370,000 caregivers by 2025. The Japanese research institute Riken has created Robear, an experimental bear-shaped robot designed to lift and carry elderly patients from beds into wheelchairs. Similar robotics are currently used in around 8% of Japanese care homes, and are expected to become more widespread thanks to a government-backed initiative to fund robotic nursesto take care of the country’s rapidly ageing population.

But there has been a certain unwillingness on the part of care-givers to relinquish their bedside duty of care, not to mention a reluctance on the part of patient to accept care from a robot. Cyberdyne, another Japanese robotics firm, is circumventing this problem with its Hybrid Assistive Limbs, a powerful exoskeleton suit which can be worn by either carers or disabled or elderly patients to enhance their movements and assist in rehabilitation.

Let’s not forget that many of us already have our own digital assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri. These can be care-givers if they are programmed to remind patients to take medication at certain points throughout the day; they can also answer repeated questions about the time, date and so on without losing their cool. They also adjust lights, open blinds and change temperature in smart homes. For patients with limited mobility, this could provide a much-missed feeling of autonomy.

In Japan, the early reluctance to embrace the robo-carer is now dwindling, partly thanks to a sophisticated media campaign and partly because there is no alternative. In one care home in Tokyo, 20 different robot models are being used to care for elderly residents. The West may cringe, as machines become the sole carers and companions of the elderly and confused, but as similar demographic challenges sweep in our direction, we would be foolish not to be paying attention.

Short answer, your digital footprint – something each and every one of us has – is working against you. In 2014, the US Department for Transportation sanctioned airlines and travel agencies to collect personal user data – including nationality, marital status, address and travel history – to tailor fares, which it claimed allowed “more agile pricing and more personalised offerings”. A blunter term to describe it would be price discrimination – also known as “personalised pricing” – the practice of charging would-be digital customers differing prices based on their perceived willingness to cough up.

Of course, price discrimination has existed for decades outside of cyberspace in the form of early-bird specials for the elderly, or knock-off rates for students, but on the internet you shed the relative anonymity you have on the high street. You’re no longer part of a broad-brush vision of what a potential customer looks like, because online businesses already possess intimately detailed accounts of who you are, what you like and how much money they think you’re willing to spend with them. If it sounds ominous, that’s because it is.

These nebulous marketing practices build profiles of your habits and interests to better target adverts and search results for products, platforms or services directly at you. This data ranges from the basic – the kinds of websites you visit, how long you stay there, your IP address, your location and the type of device you’re using – to the extremely sensitive – health and financial info, your sexual orientation, age, income, parental status.

If that doesn’t sound sinister enough, the vast majority of this data is collected without your knowledge or consent, via cookies (text files which collect and store information including user names and browsing history), your IP address and tracking scripts which monitor your web browsing across sites, among other methods. In the case of the Thailand price disparity, the airline knows you’ve been looking regularly at flights between London and Southeast Asia, and therefore feels it can get away with charging you a higher amount. Every click, every new page opened, every refresh is probably being tracked.

I say probably, because there’s no definitive way of knowing. Businesses are incredibly secretive about how they track consumers across the web, which is partly down to wanting to keep their competition in the dark, but mostly down to fear of widespread customer backlash.The recent outrage over consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica’s alleged misuse of 50 million Facebook users’ personal information, taken without permission and reportedly used to create personalised adverts during the 2016 US Presidential election, demonstrates the potential pitfalls for companies who are less than forthcoming about their intentions for the data they collect. It’s little wonder consumers are losing faith in Big Tech.

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The few concrete examples we have of internet businesses exercising digital price discrimination have been met with public anger, making the perpetrators even less likely to admit to dabbling with it in the future. In 2012, a Wall Street Journal investigation found that the website of stationer Staples displayed varying prices depending on the potential customer’s proximity to a competitor. Online travel company Orbitz was accused of directing Apple Mac-using visitors to higher-priced hotel rooms than visitors using PCs. The reasoning behind this, the WSJ claimed, was because Orbitz had determined Mac owners were inclined to spend 30% more per night on hotels.

Similarly, a 2014 study by Boston’s Northeastern University found Walmart and Home Depot were among numerous online retailers modifying the price of products in direct relation to consumers’ browsing history. Even Amazon, back in 2000, was caught charging returning customers higher prices for items than new visitors, which chief executive and founder Jeff Bezos attributed to “a random price test”, adding the company had “never tested and we never will test prices based on customer demographics”.

Some people might argue the moderation of prices based on a shoppers’ perceived ability to pay is a form of digital democracy, charging the rich to subsidise the poor. The rest of us see it as commercial extortion, fueled by covert tracking of information (which may not even be correct) to manipulate us into paying over the odds. What’s more, the sweeping reforms promised by the European Union’s forthcoming GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) –  stating user consent to cookie tracking must be clearly given – are unlikely to force firms to explicitly tell us the kind of data they’re collecting on us, and what it’ll be used for. As tracking techniques advance, marketing strategies will likely be built around tracking our moods, creating a Big Brother-esque, price-fluctuating digital dystopia.

Just as the rise of fake news forced social media firms to address their own responsibilities in circulating misinformation, the mounting anger over the Cambridge Analytica scandal should force internet giants and retailers to be more transparent in their data collection and retention methods.The tide of public opinion is turning, and consumers are fed up of being treated like cash cows. While data is important, so is trust. Lose the latter, and you’ll find yourself without the former.

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