Senior tech challenges

Remember the tech challenges we were all struggling with in the 80s? It was mastering these new fangled PCs. We were busy buying Tandy 286s or Apple whatevers, then Intel 284s, 384s and 484s. I remember when we moved to Canada in 1989 I left a Tandy behind for my mom who was then in her 80s and she successfully wrestled with that thing under the tutelage of Ellie Loudermilk and Sandy Smith to whom I owe a debt I cannot pay!

Well I think we’re there again, but this time the tech challenge is AI, Artificial Intelligence. I’ve piddled with it a bit over the last couple years but not seriously. But now I think it’s time to “turn up the volume”. Last week my wife and I watched a fascinating panel discussion with Elon Musk and several of his AI leaders who are developing his version of AI called “Grok” on the X platform. They’re actually already up to level 4 and its capabilities are astounding!

After watching the interview I decided to try an experiment by asking Grok 3 about Biblical Eschatology. I did this by asking it if it was familiar with the fact that almost 30% of the Bible was prophetic in nature and it replied “Yes”. So then I listed a bunch of prophetic themes and scriptures from the Bible in no particular order and asked it to arrange them in the chronological order in which they will be fulfilled. The output was fascinating. Not only did it list the events in a reasonable chronological order, it explained its rationale using the following outline structure without me asking for it to do so:

Proposed chronological Order of Prophecies

• Event
  • Description
  • Timing
  • Rationale

It did this with and a ten page printout for all eleven events I listed for consideration and provided a summary at the end and it did all that in less than five minutes! Needless to say I was, and continue to be impressed, hence this column!

Big Tech is spending multiple billions of dollars on this technology by building data harvesting centers all over the USA and they are so energy hungry there is serious concern of whether or not our electric grid can handle it or even if we have adequate water supplies in some areas to keep these “Data Farms” cooled properly! In fact, here’s the NPR headline from September 20, 2024: “Three Mile Island nuclear plant (in the Delaware River Southeast of Philadelphia which is just a few miles from where I grew up and why I paid so much attention to it when it was announced) will reopen to power Microsoft data centers”.

So what should we seniors be doing about this emerging technology that is already displacing jobs? For example, it was the Microsoft CEO, that recently admitted they are already using AI to write up to 30% of their new computer code! And it will do more than that in the coming months and years whether we pay attention to it or not; it’s like a tidal wave!

So here are some thoughts for you to ponder and ideas to try if you want to understand how this tech works and have some fun in the process:

• Go online and search for ChatGPT or X AI (there are a bunch of other AI websites and tools you can use but these are the ones I’ve been using)
• Use it to create personalized birthday cards by typing in something like this: “Create a humorous birthday card for my ten year old fearless grandson who loves boxing and wants to catch the biggest bass in Georgia from the new boat he bought from his uncle David”. This is exactly what I did last weekend for my ten year old grandson, Josh. Everyone loved the card and its cover photo, again from AI, and I saved about $5.00!
• Ask it for second opinions for any upcoming medical issues you or your loved ones may be facing
• Let your imagination run wild and have fun while you’re learning how to master this new tech.

If my 80 something mother could master my old PC back in the 80’s, I know you can master this new wave of AI that’s coming at us. Good luck!

Thanks for reading All About Seniors, see you next week!

Bill Milby is a Director of Visiting Angels® of Central Georgia, a non-medical, living assistance service for seniors. If you have questions or comments about this column you can reach him at william.mercylink@gmail.com or search for us at  https://www.facebook.com/VisitingAngelsofCentralGA