Older Americans Taking Classes to Understand What AI is All About

Major shifts in technology are always difficult, and some more so than others. While new tech can open up job opportunities in brand new fields, it often results in a net job loss. Swiss staffing company Adecco, for example, predicts that huge numbers of people will lose their jobs in corporate America to artificial intelligence (AI) over the next five years. 

At a senior center in Illinois, some elderly people are going back to class to learn what AI is all about. They’re surely not the only ones who want to know; you don’t have to be stooped and gray-haired to be bewildered by the proliferation of this new kind of computing that can convincingly fake being a human. The technology is maturing rapidly, and is already capable of producing video and audio of people who do not exist, but that most observers cannot detect is actually fake. 

The conversations during a recent class at the Northshore Senior Center in Northfield reflect both the common questions most Americans have about AI, as well as the perspectives of people old enough to remember life before modern conveniences. Barbara Winston, for example, is 89 years old, and said she’s old enough to remember when electric refrigerators replaced the ice boxes of old. After all the changes she has seen, Winston said AI was “probably the greatest technical revolution” she will ever see. 

One retired college teacher seemed alarmed at what AI can do, saying, “Oh, my God.” Another attendee taking notes asked the instructor if AI came “with viruses.” With the way the tech is shaping up, we might all consider ourselves lucky if viruses are the worst problems AI brings. 

One woman asked the most fundamental question that we all have, and that no one can answer: how can a human tell an AI-created product from a real one? 

Often, we simply cannot, and there seems to be no way to get around that. AI is having a particularly bad effect on the elderly, who have always been the ripest target for financial scammers. Con artists have long preyed on the old, pretending to be legitimate advisers or financial professionals while stealing the life savings of grandmas and grandpas. But AI has made the problem worse, since AI voice production can make telephone calls that fool people into believing a grandchild has been arrested and needs bail money, for example. 

Some older Americans are trying to better protect themselves by learning about the technology, but even experts in the field say there is no foolproof way to discriminate between the real and the digital in this brave new world. 

One attendee at the Illinois class displayed the kind of poise and nonchalance that only the very elderly can pull off. She said she was interested in AI, but not worried. Why? “I’m too old.”