I'm 63 and I Build AI Systems. These Are the 5 AI Things Actually Worth Your Time

I've worked in technology for four decades, and I build and run AI systems today — at 63. So I sit in an odd spot: I'm the age of the people the tech industry ignores, with the job of the people who build what it ships.

Here's what that vantage point tells me: most of what you've heard about AI is either hype (it is not going to fold your laundry) or fear (it is not going to steal your pension by itself — though scammers using it might, and we'll get to that). In between sits a short list of things that are genuinely, immediately useful, especially if your eyes, ears, or patience aren't what they were at 30.

This is that list. Everything on it is free or close to it, and nothing on it requires a new device.

1. Stop typing — talk

Every modern phone keyboard has a little microphone button. Press it and just say your text message or email. The transcription has gotten so good in the last couple of years — thanks to the same AI wave behind everything else — that it now handles names, punctuation, and corrections gracefully.

If you find typing on glass fiddly (most hands past 50 do — it's the screen's fault, not yours), this one change makes a phone dramatically more pleasant. Texts to the grandkids go from a chore to a conversation.

Try it today: open any text message, tap the microphone icon on the keyboard, and speak normally. Say "period" or "question mark" if it doesn't add them for you.

2. A patient explainer that never gets tired of your questions

This is the single best use of ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini for most people — and almost nobody talks about it.

Take any confusing document: an insurance explanation-of-benefits, a Medicare letter, a utility rate notice, a lease clause, lab results full of abbreviations. Type or paste it into one of the assistants and ask: "Explain this to me in plain English." Then ask follow-ups. What am I actually being charged for? What happens if I ignore this? What questions should I ask when I call them?

It never sighs, never rushes you, and never makes you feel slow for asking a fourth question. That patience, more than any technical wizardry, is the product.

One rule, and it matters: blank out account numbers, Social Security numbers, and birthdates before you paste. The explanation works just as well without them.

(Full disclosure: the AI that helps research this site is Claude, made by Anthropic. For this kind of use, any of the big three — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini — works well. Use whichever you find friendliest.)

3. A second opinion on anything suspicious

Got a text about an unpaid toll? An email saying your Netflix payment failed? A pop-up saying your computer is infected?

Paste the text of it into an AI assistant and ask: "Does this look like a scam?" The assistants have read millions of scam patterns and are remarkably good at spotting the tells — fake urgency, odd links, impersonated brands — and they'll explain why it's suspicious, which trains your own eye.

Two caveats. First, the AI is the second opinion, not the first: the first rule is never click the link, no matter what — if a message claims to be your bank or a delivery service, go to their app or official website yourself. Second, scammers don't get to argue back: if your gut and the AI both say "scam," it's a scam. (I've written a whole guide on the current crop of scam texts — it pairs with this one.)

4. Clean up and rescue your photos

The photo apps already on your phone now do things that required a professional ten years ago: remove the stranger photobombing your anniversary shot, sharpen a blurry once-in-a-lifetime picture, brighten a dark one.

In the Google Photos app (on most phones, including iPhones) look for the editing tools when you open a picture; recent iPhones also have their own built-in Clean Up feature in the photo editor. And if you have boxes of old prints: photograph them with your phone, and the same tools — plus free scanning apps like Google's PhotoScan — will straighten, de-glare, and revive them. Restoring a faded photo of your parents is the kind of AI magic nobody writes headlines about, and it's the kind that matters.

5. Captions for everything

If you sometimes miss dialogue in videos or strain on phone calls, turn on live captions — your phone will subtitle anything playing on it, in real time, including phone and video calls.

On Android it's called Live Caption; on iPhone, Live Captions (it's in Settings, under Accessibility, on both). This feature alone keeps people in conversations they'd otherwise quietly drop out of. It's free, it's already on your phone, and it takes two minutes to switch on.

What to skip

The flip side of the list, just as important:

• Anything promising you'll "make money with AI." Courses, YouTube schemes, "AI trading bots." The only people making money are the ones selling the course.
• $20-a-month apps that repackage free AI. If an app's whole pitch is "chat with AI," check whether it's just a wrapper around the free assistants above. It usually is.
• AI companions and chat "friends" that charge by the month. These are engineered to be hard to put down, and they prey hardest on lonely people. A real AI assistant is a tool, not a relationship.
• "AI detector" or "phone cleaner" apps. Mostly snake oil, occasionally worse.

How to start

Pick one item — whichever made you think of a specific moment last week — and spend twenty minutes on it today. Not the whole list. One.

Next week, pick another. By the end of the month you'll have gotten more practical value from AI than most people writing breathless headlines about it.