Helping older adults use AI in everyday life

OpenAI says it’s collaborating with Older Adults Technology Services (OATS) from AARP on the Older Adults AI Skills Jam: free, in-person ChatGPT workshops for 1,000 older adults across 10 U.S. cities, tied to Senior Planet.

OpenAI reports U.S. messages associated with people 55+ grew from 6% to nearly 10% in a year. Workshops cover trip planning, confusing bills, hobbies, family connection—and online safety: urgent language, secrecy, suspicious links, and a pause-think-ask rule.

Access without safety literacy is how scams scale. This pairs both.

We’re for this kind of useful AI rollout—hands-on, local, and honest about fraud.

OpenAI’s post centers practical tasks older adults already attempt, plus explicit scam hygiene. That’s the right priority order. ChatGPT as a second set of eyes on a suspicious message is a concrete benefit; a workshop that only demos poetry is not.

The downside if it scales carelessly: over-trust in the model’s scam verdicts, or workshops that become soft marketing while sophisticated fraud still adapts. Also, “nearly 10%” of messages from 55+ is OpenAI’s own telemetry framing—useful directionally, not a census.

I’m watching whether OATS publishes outcome measures—confidence, scam reports avoided—not only attendance counts. And whether similar jams reach rural and non-English-dominant seniors, not only ten launch cities.

OATS/Senior Planet is AARP’s older-adult technology education arm. The Skills Jam is described as part of a multi-year OpenAI–OATS effort.