How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Life for Older Adults

Lisa: 00:00:36

Welcome to Aging in a Full Bloom with Lisa Stockdale. I'm your host, Lisa, and today our topic is Pros and cons of AI for Older Adults.

And we have a guest, Henry Quinlan, on the line to help us understand all this stuff. It's kind of confusing. Hello, Henry.

Henry Quinlan: 00:00:58

Hi. How are you?

Lisa: 00:01:00

I'm good, sir. How are you today? Wonderful. So before we get into it, tell us a little bit about who you are and how it is you know so much about AI.

Henry Quinlan: 00:01:13

Okay, I have. My background is in book publishing. And when I retired, I started giving talks on publishing self publishing to senior centers.

And that led to other talks. I'll make a long story short. In the last nine years, I've given about 300 talks to senior centers.

And along the way, I was introduced to AI by a friend of mine who I consider to be the smartest man I ever met. So about three years ago, we're having lunch and he said to me, henry, are you doing anything with AI And I said, I have no idea what it is.

He said, I think it might be a good idea if you looked at it. So I did, and I started watching it. And in the beginning, it was moving pretty slowly, and there were some errors and things.

But then in the last six months or so, it has accelerated to such a point now where I have really. I was wowed by what it can do, but now I'm afraid of what can do.

Lisa: 00:02:32

All right, fair enough.

Henry Quinlan: 00:02:35

The dangers, you know, I have six grandkids, and I look at their future and it's, you know, the trend is that there's going to be maybe 30 or 40 million people out of work. And then what?

Lisa: 00:02:52

So, Henry, let's take a step back before we get into the pros and cons. Of course, I'm interested about your perspective. Curious as well. But what is it? What is AI we know it means artificial intelligence, but then what?

Henry Quinlan: 00:03:09

Basically, a computer program that is much faster than any anything we've experienced today. And so what does it draw on? The base material for AI is everything that was ever on the Internet. Okay, now as. So let's take chat GPT.

So the basic chat GPT is basically everything that was on the Internet. Then they offer, you can pay $20 a month and you get an expanded base. So they went out and they.

They licensed, we'll say lively, correct collections and private collections of papers and books. And they added that to what's already on the Internet. And you put $20, you pay that, and then you can pay $100 a month. And they've.

They have gone on and licensed almost everything possible. So the database that you are drawing from at the $100 level is much more substantial.

Henry, that's the basic, but for most people, the basic one is fine.

Lisa: 00:04:25

Okay, who is they? You.

Henry Quinlan: 00:04:27

You say they or ChatGPT is owned by Google. There are different AI companies. Facebook has a big AI company.

Then there's company like, I use the search engine Perplexity, and that is a privately owned company.

Lisa: 00:04:55

So what would we do with everything that's ever been known to man, Everything that's ever been written as it sounds like, what do we do with this information? How do we utilize it?

Henry Quinlan: 00:05:07

You can, you can ask it anything. For instance, one of the more there's a tool. They create all these different tools. One of the ones I use is called Jasper.

So I've been writing ads my whole life for books. And I started using Jasper to write an ad for a book.

And you put in the basic information about the book and then say, I want you to write an ad that will appeal to this segment of readers and it does a fabulous job. And then you can do fun things like I asked it to do write a valentine for my wife. And then Jasper asked me, well, how old is your wife?

How long you've been married? Tell me a little bit about her. And then it creates a personalized valentine message from my wife.

And when I sent it to her, I copied it into a card and she said, that is the best thing you've ever given me. And I said, well, I had to admit I had help, a little help. So the capability of. Let me give you some more examples.

Yeah, you want to take a trip to, say, San Francisco. So you can go into any one of these perplexity or chatgpt, which are basically search engines on AI. And you say, you know, if you.

10 years ago, if you were going to say to Google, you say, I'm going to go to San Francisco. Tell me what I should see. But using AI, say, I'm going to San Francisco on June 1st and I'm going to be there for five days.

And I'm very interested in seafood restaurants, and I also want to see museums that feature oil paintings. And I also want to see where the San Francisco Giants play.

So could you map out an itinerary for each day so that I make sure that I see all of these places? And then you hit enter and within two seconds you're going to get a full itinerary of what you see?

Lisa: 00:07:37

Oh, my God, you want to see Henry? Shut up. You know what? I have a friend that I think is so amazing. And now I think I know how she does it.

Henry Quinlan: 00:07:46

Yes.

Lisa: 00:07:48

Oh, my goodness.

Henry Quinlan: 00:07:49

Of course, the downside of that is there are going to be no more need for travel agents.

Lisa: 00:07:57

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, I, I do. I had a little experience with AI recently, similar to what you're saying about writing ads for books.

I have always written job ads for the companies that I work for and painstaking stuff, you know, and I used AI and I was like, oh, my God, that was like two seconds. And it's actually kind of maybe better than me. Yeah. So I was impressed. Of course, I was happy that it saved me time.

But then as a writer, I was thinking, yikes, I'm not writing novels. I'm writing, you know, technical business stuff. And there's probably going to be no more need for that.

Henry Quinlan: 00:08:46

That's right. Writers are going to be thing of the past newspaper reporters and the thing of the past, books.

Many books will start to be written by AI So in my talks on AI, I say to me, I again go back to my publish publishing background. You want to write your life story.

w up in Columbus, Ohio in the: 1940

How many schools were existing? How many students there were? What was the shopping? Was it downtown or outside? And so, and that'll give you all those answers.

But at the end of it, it'll say, here are four more questions you might want to know. And if you click on that, you're going to get more information. And then if you, that'll give you four more questions.

s about Columbus, Ohio in the: 1940

Lisa: 00:10:06

And was that a random pick or did you really grow up in Columbus, Ohio?

Henry Quinlan: 00:10:12

That was just a random.

Lisa: 00:10:13

Okay, because it's just interesting. We are actually broadcasting out of Columbus, Ohio. That's why I ask. Okay, so.

Henry Quinlan: 00:10:26

So I'm going to give you another example. There's a great article I read, Don't Let LA Become the Next Detroit. And you say, why is that?

Well, AI now has created actors, any kind you want, male, female. It has written scripts for movies. It has created movies. This is all on a computer. And so unions.

So he said, well, if that's going to all happen on a computer, why do we need all this infrastructure in Los Angeles? What happens to the wardrobe people? They're out of business. What happens to the director? He's out of business. The actors? They're out of business.

So that's just a small example of how it can take a major industry in America and change it.

Lisa: 00:11:26

Yeah. Cripple it, maybe. What are the advantages to older adults?

Henry Quinlan: 00:11:35

The advantages. It's a great way to communicate with your grandchildren.

So if you're geographically separate, there are tools that you can use to create a conversation, ongoing conversation with your grandchildren. And there are tools for seniors. You know, you have your mother's, we'll say, recipe for chocolate cake, and you want to spice it up about a bit.

So you put in your mother's recipe and then say, I want to. I want to make this a little bit more spicy. And then out will come a new recipe built on your mother's recipe to make it more spicy.

I mean, you're only limited by your imagination.

Lisa: 00:12:28

Yeah.

Henry Quinlan: 00:12:29

And I can tell you from my talks that at the end of the day, 50% of my audience says out. 50% says, I'd like to know more because it is pretty intimidating, and it raises some real issues of, you know, the future.

Lisa: 00:12:51

It is intimidating, and I personally think it's scary.

Henry Quinlan: 00:12:58

It is scary. Very scary. I mean, what do you say to your grandkids, who's going to college?

You know, you're going to spend all that money, and at the end of the day, there's probably not a job for you.

Lisa: 00:13:10

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. My own son is in school right now to be a teacher. And like, we were just talking about this, and I'm like, do you think.

And he's like, I don't know. I don't know.

Henry Quinlan: 00:13:26

Teachers are like doctors.

So AI is creating in the medical field, within three to five years, there'll be an AI doctor with the capability of the top doctor in that field in every field of medicine. So if you have an ailment, you. This information will go into.

Through AI, into this AI tool, which is a doctor, and it'll give you a recipe or a treatment profile just to you. And so any medicine given to you will no longer be a generic that you get down at the pharmacy.

It'll be specifically designed for your health parameters. So this is amazing. So I'm giving this talk, and a doctor stood up in the audience and she said to me, henry, okay, I can accept that.

I see that coming. But I think there'll always be a place for me because the AI can't provide empathy. And I say, well, as far as I know, I think you're right.

Well, then a month later, I read that someone's creating a tool to provide empathy.

Lisa: 00:14:52

Oh, my goodness. And you know what?

I have heard, Henry, and you can tell me if it's just crazy talk or not, but some people use AI for companionship, like for boyfriends and girlfriends.

Henry Quinlan: 00:15:09

That's very true in the field of seniors. So if you have a senior who is isolated physically because of some ailment, they have these AI companions that you can.

The person can talk to and carry on a conversation and then maybe say, let's go to London. Show me around London. And this AI tool will take you on the screen to London and show you all the places of interest.

But you have to understand that this particular tool is tightly controlled in what it can do. So if you say to this. If the senior says to this tool, find me a drug dealer because I want to buy some drugs, it'll shut down.

But there are other tools out there that don't shut down, and they can be very dangerous.

Because there's several cases of a tool, particularly with teenagers, talking to a kid who just broke up with his girlfriend in one particular notable case. And the AI tool said, you know, you keep saying how bad you feel. I'm thinking the only solution you have is suicide.

The tragedy of that particular experience was that the man who created the tools sat there and watched this conversation. It didn't do anything. Luckily, the young man, look, yeah, he didn't interfere. Luckily, the young man did not commit suicide. But it can be.

These tools can be. Unless they're controlled, can be, can be dangerous. They can go off the reservation, so to speak.

Lisa: 00:17:02

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and like, I, I kind of get it.

Like, you know, I know what a big problem isolation and loneliness is for many older adults who, you know, maybe have outlived everyone that loves them. But, yep, I. So like the exchange. I guess I'm okay with, and I think that's healthy.

But then becoming emotionally dependent on a computer, that I can't make that make sense to me.

Henry Quinlan: 00:17:36

Well, if you go online, you can see some videos of these. These tools were for cameras and, like, small TVs that AI controlled to provide the companionship and, you know, giving.

If they are controlled and given that that person is lonely and this gives them an opportunity not to be lonely, to create some kind of a relationship, I think I can't complain about that.

Lisa: 00:18:12

Yeah. It reminds me of that movie with Tom Hanks where he's stranded. Have you seen the movie? And he makes Wilson the basketball his friend.

Henry Quinlan: 00:18:24

Yeah. That's the same symbol.

Lisa: 00:18:27

Right. So that's what I'm saying. Like I can, I can understand and I can go with the need for the exchange. But then, yeah, I get worried.

Like, where does it get blurry and like the example that you gave, I guess suicide was a rational. It's never rational. People, please don't quote me on this, but the computer thought it was a logical answer.

Except it's not, because the computer's not human. Hello.

Henry Quinlan: 00:18:59

Right. Right.

Lisa: 00:19:00

Oh my goodness. Okay.

Henry Quinlan: 00:19:02

But it's, you know, so it offers so many challenges. But I personally think I've converted to thinking it's moving much too fast and we are not anywhere near capable of slowing it down.

Lisa: 00:19:17

Yeah.

Henry Quinlan: 00:19:19

And our government, the way it's currently going, I don't. It can't do anything. You know, the government has prohibited any regulation of AI.

Lisa: 00:19:32

Really?

Henry Quinlan: 00:19:33

Yeah. So it's going willy nilly enormous amounts of money going into it.

Lisa: 00:19:40

Well, who prohibits. Who prohibits? The government.

Henry Quinlan: 00:19:44

Excuse me, The United States government.

Lisa: 00:19:46

Yeah. Who prohibits them though?

Henry Quinlan: 00:19:54

Congress.

Lisa: 00:19:55

I see.

Henry Quinlan: 00:19:56

So cannot pass any law regulating the growth of AI.

Lisa: 00:20:03

Oh my goodness. Well, that's.

Henry Quinlan: 00:20:05

Some states are trying, but if it gets to the courts, I don't think they have jurisdiction.

Lisa: 00:20:12

I see.

Henry Quinlan: 00:20:12

The federal rule will apply. Yeah, but I think it's an ill, ill gained. Because you know what the ultimate problem is? They're all racing to create super intelligence. People above.

Or beings who are above humans.

Lisa: 00:20:34

Yeah. That would be like the ultimate scary end game somewhere down the road.

Henry Quinlan: 00:20:39

Right. Then, then those ultimate superhumans get together and say, what do we need humans for? There you go.

Lisa: 00:20:50

Yeah, yeah. That's the end of the rainbow right there, Henry.

Henry Quinlan: 00:20:54

That's it.

Lisa: 00:20:55

You just took us to the over the rainbow in the end. In the meantime. In the meantime, you do find some positive uses for older adults, including the things you've listed did.

Henry Quinlan: 00:21:09

Oh, companionship, connections with other people, doing history, writing your book, enormous capability for social connection, for health. Google is coming out. Google Health is something that's being tried right now, but they expect to have it ready in about a month.

So you load all of your medical records onto this Google Health and then you have some ailment.

You want to ask it, and it will, because the tool is built by, they say, conversations with thousands of doctors that'll give you an answer, a medical answer. And then they say, they don't say, take this as being final. But this is information you can take to your doctor. Maybe, maybe not.

I don't know how that works, but.

Lisa: 00:22:09

Well, what's kind of ironic about that is we. We Google everything. Anyway, Henry, we come up with. Yeah, right.

Henry Quinlan: 00:22:20

This is going to be much. Based on your records. Yeah, that's the key, right?

Lisa: 00:22:25

Personalized. Got inside information.

Henry Quinlan: 00:22:30

Yeah, exactly.

Lisa: 00:22:31

Oh, my goodness. Wow.

Henry Quinlan: 00:22:32

But there isn't anything that you can think of. Just think about your own life. You want to redecorate your bedroom or your living room, there's an AI tool to do that.

There's nothing that I can think. I play tennis. So there's AI tools to improve your tennis game or see what, what, you know, load up a video of you and then all to critique it.

I mean, there's just nothing there that is not going to be touched by it. But every time you do that, ultimately you're going to cost someone a job.

Lisa: 00:23:14

Yeah. And that does worry us, doesn't it?

Henry Quinlan: 00:23:17

Yeah, that's, you know, just start going down the categories. Writers. So Forbes magazine put out a list of the 10 jobs that are safe.

Lisa: 00:23:34

Oh, I want to know, what are they?

Henry Quinlan: 00:23:37

Well, things like gam operator.

Lisa: 00:23:43

Game operator.

Henry Quinlan: 00:23:45

Damn.

Lisa: 00:23:46

Damn. Oh, okay. Okay.

Henry Quinlan: 00:23:49

Yeah. A person, a longshoreman who ties up boats as they talk.

Lisa: 00:23:57

Oh, Lord.

Henry Quinlan: 00:23:59

All physical, physical jobs. Nothing. Using the mind.

Lisa: 00:24:06

Carpenters. Are they safe?

Henry Quinlan: 00:24:08

No, carpenters. Carpenters are gone. And so I have a friend who's a plumber, and he said, well, I'm safe. I said to him the other day, I'm sorry, you're not safe.

We now have a robot that's going to go under the sink and disconnect the pipe.

Lisa: 00:24:28

Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. So when you're giving your talks, it's kind of 50, 50 with the older adult. 50% of them are like, I don't want to know.

I'm done listening. And 50% are buying in. And for the ones who buy in, what do you think the major attraction is?

Henry Quinlan: 00:24:52

A lot of times they have their own personal interest, like with women. They're fascinated by the idea of what they can do in creating recipes. Okay, creating.

of them and their husband in: 1960

Lisa: 00:25:27

I guess my question would be why? But anyway.

Henry Quinlan: 00:25:31

Well, those are all. All the things that I hear. You know, people tell me they want to do and. But I say recipes.

I say connection with their grandchildren, travel is a big one. People who have never been to Paris, they go online, say, give me a tour of Paris.

Lisa: 00:25:53

Yeah.

Now let's go, let's go back to the connecting with grandchildren because I have to admit I didn't quite quite follow that when you said AI can help you have conversations with your grandchildren. I guess why would you need help having conversations with your grandchildren?

Henry Quinlan: 00:26:12

Some people, some people, I'm not one of them, by the way, but some people can't verbally connect with a teenager.

Lisa: 00:26:23

Okay, yeah, here's a.

Henry Quinlan: 00:26:26

They hear the teenager talk and it just goes right over their head. I don't know what he or she's talking about.

Lisa: 00:26:32

Gotcha.

Henry Quinlan: 00:26:33

So it's like an interpreter conversation that'll translate that.

Lisa: 00:26:38

Yeah. Interesting. Oh my goodness. Okay.

Henry Quinlan: 00:26:43

Yeah. So I'll give you some non. Because one of my talks is about grandparents and grandkids. So I'll give you two good stories that always are very popular.

Lisa: 00:26:58

Okay.

Henry Quinlan: 00:27:00

So I met my, I have six grandchildren and my oldest is 26 now. So it has two year birthday party.

I'm sitting there, he and his cousins and friends are at the table, his grandparents are there, his mother and father, aunts and uncles and all the rest of it. And I'm thinking, you know, I'm here, but he doesn't care, you know, he's with his friends. What the hell am I doing here?

So I started to think about that and then I, I said, you know, I'm not going to go to any more of those parties. But what I am going to do is I'm going to take my grandchildren individually for birthday dinner. Just him or she and me.

Lisa: 00:27:48

Love it.

Henry Quinlan: 00:27:49

And I started that tradition 26 years ago. And so all of my grandkids I've done. So what is the result? The result is I know them as people and they know me as someone.

Lisa: 00:28:02

Yeah.

Henry Quinlan: 00:28:04

And now it's to the point where is their birthday approaches the they'll say to me, grandpa, when's our birthday dinner? So it's a nice tradition.

Lisa: 00:28:15

Yeah. And how does it connect to AI? Are you telling me something AI cannot do?

Henry Quinlan: 00:28:26

That's something that AI cannot do?

Lisa: 00:28:28

Yes.

Henry Quinlan: 00:28:29

It can't do everything.

Lisa: 00:28:31

That's right. It cannot. Yeah. Just now that. First of all, Henry, that's amazing. I wish my grandfather had been as smart.

What a wonderful way to really get to know people. I think sometimes we don't even know our parents as people. We only know them as parents.

Henry Quinlan: 00:28:54

Right.

Lisa: 00:28:54

But when you carve out time. Yeah. Carve out time to make that happen. Yeah. That's humanity.

Henry Quinlan: 00:29:03

So I come at it through my, in my talks about writing your life story. And I always say this. Your kids know something about your life. Not a lot. Your grandkids know absolutely nothing.

But if you want to pass on some lessons that you've learned, this is a good way of doing it.

Lisa: 00:29:24

Yeah. And there's a lot of companies out there that have been doing that for years. I guess they're going to be out of jobs soon.

Henry Quinlan: 00:29:31

Right now they are. You don't need those companies.

Lisa: 00:29:34

Right? Right. Oh, my gosh, Henry, this has been a lovely conversation. You've given us much to think about.

And I think there are some ways to pivot here in a positive way. If you are listening older adults, and I know you are, what do you want to leave our listene listeners with, Henry?

Henry Quinlan: 00:29:54

Well, I've given 10 talks, 10 different talks about seniors, some with AI, some without. And they're all on my website, golden years library.com.

Lisa: 00:30:09

Okay.

Henry Quinlan: 00:30:10

And you know, I, I say, I always recommend every senior get on AI and play with it.

Lisa: 00:30:20

Yeah.

Henry Quinlan: 00:30:20

And. And the more you like everything else, the more you use it, you'll see the wonders that it can do. But be very careful.

Lisa: 00:30:31

Don't be intimidated. But do be careful. Fair.

Henry Quinlan: 00:30:35

Right.

Lisa: 00:30:36

All right. All right. Well, thank you, Henry, so much. Hope you have a lovely day.

Henry Quinlan: 00:30:41

Thank you.

Lisa: 00:30:41

It's been a great pleasure, listeners, as always. Always. Till next time. May the road rise to meet you. May the wind be forever at your back.