I'm 60-Something and I Use AI Every Day. Here's What I Wish Someone Had Explained at the Beginning.

Artificial intelligence sounds much more intimidating than it needs to.

Even the name doesn't help. Artificial intelligence. It sounds technical, futuristic and slightly ominous, as though understanding it requires a computer science degree and a working knowledge of things involving lots of letters and numbers.

I have neither.

I'm in my sixties. I grew up long before smartphones, Google and social media became ordinary parts of life. I've watched technology arrive in waves, learned what I needed along the way, ignored plenty of it, and occasionally wondered why something that worked perfectly well yesterday suddenly needed an app.

And now I use AI almost every day.

I use it to research things that make me curious. I ask questions, challenge answers, explore ideas, create resources, troubleshoot problems and occasionally disappear down magnificent rabbit holes that started with one innocent question.

Somewhere along the way, AI stopped feeling like technology and started feeling like a tool.

Curiosity has no age limit. AI is simply another tool we can learn to use.

That is what I wish someone had explained to me at the beginning.

Using AI doesn't mean you need to understand how it works

You probably don't understand exactly how your television receives a picture either. Most of us couldn't explain what happens inside our phone when we tap a photograph and send it halfway around the world.

We use these things because we learned what buttons to press and what they can do for us.

AI can be approached in much the same way. At its most practical level, you type something into a box and have a conversation.

That's it.

You can ask a question in exactly the way you would ask another person. You don't need special commands. You don't need perfect grammar. You don't need to know the fashionable word prompt before you begin.

You can type:

I don't understand artificial intelligence. Explain it to me without using technical language.

And you're off.

AI doesn't know everything — and this matters

This was one of the most important things for me to understand.

AI can sound extraordinarily confident. Unfortunately, confidence and correctness aren't the same thing.

It can misunderstand your question. It can give outdated information. It can occasionally produce information that sounds entirely plausible and is completely wrong.

So I don't think of AI as an all-knowing oracle.

I think of it as an extremely capable assistant that still requires supervision. If I'm researching something important, I check the sources. If something sounds questionable, I challenge it. I ask where the information came from. Sometimes I go away and research it independently.

You remain the person doing the thinking. That distinction matters.

You are allowed to say, "I don't understand"

One of my favourite things about learning with AI is that there is no embarrassment involved.

You can ask the same question three different ways.

You can say:

I still don't understand. Make that easier.

Or:

Give me an example from everyday life.

Or even:

Explain that as though I've never heard of this before.

It doesn't sigh. It doesn't roll its eyes.

It doesn't tell you that everyone else already knows this.

That makes AI an interesting learning tool for those of us who sometimes encounter technology and quietly wonder whether we missed a meeting somewhere.

We didn't.

Technology just moves ridiculously quickly.

The useful part is much bigger than research

Because I write, AI naturally finds its way into that part of my life too. I use it to research, test an idea, question my own thinking and sometimes help me find the words for something I already know I want to say. There can be a great deal of conversation before a finished piece ever appears. The thoughts, experiences and opinions are still mine; AI can just help me work through them much faster than staring at a blinking cursor.

But research is only one example of what these tools can help us do.

You could ask AI to explain an unfamiliar term in a letter you've received. You could ask for meal ideas using ingredients already sitting in your kitchen. You could ask it to compare features when you're researching something to buy, help plan a holiday, explain how something on your phone works, create questions to ask a tradesperson, help organise a family celebration, suggest books based on what you enjoy, or teach you about a subject you've always wondered about.

You can take something complicated and ask:

What does this actually mean?

That may be one of AI's most useful abilities.

So, it begs the question... why bother writing at all?

As I was writing this post, a question began forming in my mind. If AI can do so much, why would I bother to write at all?

The answer came surprisingly quickly.

Because I'm a reader too.

Sometimes I go looking for one thing and find something else entirely. A writer mentions an experience I recognise, expresses a thought I've never quite been able to put into words, or offers a perspective on the world that makes me stop for a moment. I might have arrived looking for information and left thinking about something I hadn't expected to find.

That's part of the pleasure of reading another person's work. We aren't always looking for the fastest answer. Sometimes it's the little detours, observations and surprises within someone else's thoughts that stay with us.

AI is extraordinarily useful, and I'm very happy to have it beside me. But I still want to read what other people notice about being alive. And as long as I hope to stumble across those thoughts in someone else's writing, I think it's worth continuing to share some of mine.

There are things I wouldn't give it

Learning to use AI also means learning where the boundaries should be.

I wouldn't type my passwords into it. I wouldn't hand over banking details, identification numbers or highly sensitive personal information simply because an AI asked for context.

I also wouldn't make an important medical, legal or financial decision purely because an AI told me what to do.

Use AI to help you understand. Use it to develop questions. Use it to research possibilities.

Then use appropriate professionals and reliable sources when the consequences matter.

The same sensible caution we've learned to use elsewhere online belongs here too.

And then there are the scams

This is the part of modern AI I think we all need to understand, whether we intend to use AI ourselves or never touch it.

Artificial intelligence can create remarkably convincing text, voices, photographs and video.

That gives scammers increasingly sophisticated tools.

A message can look genuine.

A voice can sound familiar.

An image can appear convincing.

The answer isn't to become frightened of everything online. It's to become a little harder to fool.

Slow down when something creates urgency. Don't trust a message purely because it appears to come from someone you know. Verify unusual requests another way. Never send money because a frightening or emotional message pressures you into acting immediately.

Understanding AI is becoming part of understanding the world around us.

I think our generation can learn this perfectly well

There's an odd assumption around technology that younger automatically means better.

Younger people certainly grew up surrounded by more of it.

But growing up with something and understanding it aren't necessarily the same thing.

Those of us who remember life before the internet have already adapted through enormous technological change. We went from landlines to smartphones, street directories to GPS, handwritten letters to email, bank tellers to internet banking, photo albums to photographs stored somewhere mysteriously called the cloud.

We've been learning new systems for decades.

AI is another one.

And I'm increasingly convinced that the best way to understand it isn't to sit down and study artificial intelligence.

It's to use it.

Ask something.

See what happens.

Question the answer.

Ask another question.

Get it wrong.

Try again.

Curiosity will take you surprisingly far.

Start with one conversation

If you've been curious about AI but haven't known where to begin, forget about becoming an expert.

Open an AI tool and ask it something you genuinely want to know.

You might even begin with:

Hi. I'm new to AI, and I'm a little unsure about all of this. Can you show me something useful I can do with you?

Then have a conversation.

You may discover, as I did, that behind all the intimidating terminology is something much less frightening:

a new tool to learn.

And we're certainly old enough to have learned a few of those already.

A Little Something to Take With You

If you're curious about AI and would like something straightforward to keep nearby, I've created a free two-page guide, 10 Things to Know About Using AI. It covers some of the basics I've talked about here, including privacy, scams, asking questions and remembering that you're still the one in control.

Click the image below to find it in the Deb Eternal Printable Library. It's free to download, print and keep for whenever you need it.

Namaste

Deb xx

Thoughtful writing across life, mind, and meaning.

10 Things to Know About Using AI — a free two-page printable guide for curious minds.