Tech
Older Americans are using AI. Study shows how and what they think of it
Artificial intelligence is a lively topic of conversation in schools and workplaces, which could lead you to believe that only younger people use it. However, older Americans are also using AI. This raises the questions of what they’re doing with the technology and what they think of it.
I’m a researcher who studies older age, disability and technology use. I partnered with the University of Michigan’s National Poll on Healthy Aging to survey nearly 3,000 Americans over the age of 50. We asked them whether and how they use AI and what concerns they have about using it.
Of the older people we surveyed, 55% responded that they had used some type of AI technology that they can speak to, like Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, or type to, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot. Voice assistants were overwhelmingly more popular than text chatbots: Half of them reported using a voice assistant within the past year, compared to 1 in 4 who used a chatbot.
Popular, among some
Independent living continues to be a major goal of older Americans as they either do not want to or are unable to afford to live in long-term care communities, and AI may be a tool to support this goal. Our findings show that older adults who use AI in their homes find it helpful for living independently and safely.
They mostly used these technologies for entertainment or searching for information, but some of their responses show more creative uses, such as generating text, creating images or planning vacations.
Nearly 1 in 3 older adults reported using AI-powered home security devices, including doorbells, outdoor cameras and alarm systems. Nearly all of those people—96%—felt safer using them.
While there has been some concern about privacy when using cameras indoors to monitor older people, cameras aimed outdoors seem to provide a sense of security for those who may be aging in their homes alone or without family nearby. Of the 35% of older adults who reported using AI-powered home security systems, 96% said they were beneficial.
However, when we dove into which older adults are using AI, we saw that demographics matter. Specifically, those in better health, with more education and higher incomes were more likely to have used AI-powered voice assistants and home security devices in the past year. This pattern seems to follow adoption trends of other technologies such as smartphones.
Trusting AI is tricky
As more information about AI’s accuracy emerges, so do questions about whether people can trust it. Our survey results show that older Americans are split on whether to trust content that was generated by AI: 54% said they trust AI, and 46% said they do not. People who trusted AI more were more likely to have used some type of AI technology within the past year.
Further, AI-generated content can sometimes look correct but be inaccurate. Being able to identify incorrect information from AI is important for assessing whether and how to use AI-generated search results or chatbots. However, only half of the older people surveyed were confident that they could identify whether content from AI was incorrect.
More educated users were more likely to say they felt confident they could spot inaccuracies. Conversely, older adults who reported lower levels of physical and mental health were less likely to trust AI-generated content.
What to do?
Together, these findings repeat a common cycle of technology adoption that is pervasive even among younger demographics, where more educated and healthy people are among the first to adopt and be aware of newer technologies. This raises questions about how to best reach all older people about the benefits and risks of AI.
How can older people who are not AI users get support for learning more so that they can make informed decisions about whether to use it? How can institutions develop better training and awareness tools so that older people who trust AI avoid trusting it too much or inappropriately using AI to make important decisions without understanding the risks?
Our survey results highlight potential starting points for developing AI literacy tools for older adults. Nine in 10 older people wanted to know when information had been generated by AI. We are starting to see AI labels on search engine results, such as Google search’s AI snippets.
Michigan and other states have adopted policies for disclosing AI content in political ads, but these notices could be made more visible in other contexts, such as nonpolitical advertising and on social media. Further, nearly 80% of older people wanted to learn more about AI risks—where it might go wrong and what to do about it.
Policymakers can focus on enforcing AI notices that signal content was generated by AI, particularly at a critical time when the U.S. is considering revising its AI policies to do just the opposite—removing language about risk, discrimination and misinformation—based on a new executive order.
Overall, our findings show that AI can support healthy aging. However, overtrust and mistrust of AI could be addressed with better training tools and policies to make risks more visible.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Tech
L.L.Bean Promo Codes and Coupons: Up to 75% Off
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Tech
MPs launch inquiry into use of tech in education | Computer Weekly
MPs have launched an inquiry into the use of technology and artificial intelligence (AI) in education.
The cross-party Education Select Committee will look at how technology can both help and hinder the UK’s education sector, not just in schools, but also colleges, universities and early years services.
“AI and EdTech are already reshaping education, from the early years and secondary school right through to college and university,” said Helen Hayes, chair of the committee.
“These tools could represent an extraordinary opportunity to elevate learning and streamline teachers’ busy workloads. At the same time, there are risks in deploying rapidly developing technology without any clear values-based decision-making or evaluation framework, and without a full understanding of the consequences, and there is a potential risk of widening inequality between students.”
Educators are already dipping their toes into the tech sphere, for example, at Bett Show 2025, it was announced the government had plans to help teachers use AI for lesson planning and marking, and Ofsted found many schools are experimenting with the use of AI for personalised learning, translation of resources, and turning lessons and other resources into podcasts.
The government has already started looking into the potential uses of AI in schools and other education establishments, including the development of AI tools for 1:1 tutoring, but AI is causing a number of concerns among students and parents alike, with parents changing their career advice to children as a result of widespread AI adoption.
As pointed out by education secretary Bridget Phillipson in early 2026, the government has to “get this right” for the technology to meet its potential as the “biggest boost for education in the last 500 years”.
The Education Select Committee will look into several areas of tech and AI adoption in education, including how it will affect skills, safeguarding issues and how teachers will cope with tech deployment.
Access to technology, AI and digital tech has the potential to widen the diversity divide in the UK, and the committee will consider whether introducing AI risks making this issue worse.
When it comes to tech’s impact on skills, the committee will look into how AI specifically will affect critical thinking, problem solving and speech development.
Teachers have a longstanding issue with tech deployment and teaching tech skills, so how they are supported in implementing tech during teaching, as well as ensuring they can properly use it, will need to be considered. The committee will also explore how tech and AI may change the way assessments are undertaken.
How AI and tech is integrated into each level of education in the UK has the potential to either massively help or catastrophically hinder the UK’s education delivery and skills development.
“Our inquiry will take a hard look at the evidence, and separate AI fact from fiction,” said Hayes. “We will explore how AI and EdTech are already being used and consider how the government can balance its benefits with safeguards against the risks it poses.
“The committee wants to understand how technology is shaping children and young people’s lives and learning, and what more the government needs to do to ensure that every child and young person is able to thrive,” she said. “I encourage anyone with experience in this area to submit evidence to our inquiry.”
Tech
What Is That Mysterious Metallic Device US Chief Design Officer Joe Gebbia Is Using?
Joe Gebbia, cofounder of Airbnb and the US Chief Design Officer appointed by Trump, was spotted in San Francisco today using a mysterious metallic device. In a social media post on X viewed over 500,000 times, a man who looks like Gebbia sits with an espresso at a coffee shop. He’s wearing metallic buds that bisect his ears, with a matching clamshell-shaped disc in front of him on the counter.
After the video was posted Monday morning, social media users were quick to suggest that this could be some kind of prototype from OpenAI’s upcoming line of hardware devices designed in partnership with famed Apple designer Jony Ive. An OpenAI spokesperson declined to comment on the potential Gebbia video after WIRED reached out. Gebbia also did not respond to a request for comment.
The device Gebbia appears to be wearing looks quite similar to the hardware seen in a fake OpenAI ad that was widely circulated on Reddit and social media in February. That video from last month seemingly showed Pillion actor Alexander Skarsgård interacting with an AI device that had a similar-looking pair of earbuds and a circular disc. At the time, OpenAI denounced the widely seen video as not real. “Fake news,” wrote OpenAI President Greg Brockman at the time, responding to a social media post.
The earbuds seen in the video of Gebbia also look quite similar in shape to the Huawei FreeClip 2, a pair of open earbuds released earlier this year. However, the clamshell seen on the coffee counter next to Gebbia is different from Huawei’s most recent headphone case. It would also be quite surprising if a government official were seen using Huawei tech, considering the Chinese company is effectively banned from selling its phones in the US due to security concerns.
WIRED’s audio experts say he’s most likely wearing open earbuds, as Gebbia’s pair share some similarities with Soundcore’s AeroClips or Sony’s LinkBuds Clip, though the cases for those buds don’t match what’s on the table in front of Gebbia. WIRED also ran the photo and video through software that attempts to identify AI-generated outputs and other deepfakes. The detection software, from a company called Hive, says the odds are low that this imagery of Gebbia was generated by AI. Still, AI detectors are not always reliable and can include false outputs. It’s possible that the entire post could be a synthetic hoax.
Could this be some kind of soft launch teaser for OpenAI’s hardware? The timing of this trickle out would make sense, since the company may ship devices to consumers sometime early in 2027. Still, OpenAI denied any involvement with the previous pseudo-ad for the metallic AI hardware, with its shiny earbuds and matching disc.
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