Older people are being left out of decisions about how artificial intelligence (AI) is being built.
Many older adults are highly skilled, curious about emerging technologies and keen to learn about AI; they’re interested in its potential for our society. However, research shows that many employers still assume older employees are less tech-savvy.
Consequently, older adults often miss out on job opportunities or are passed over for promotions, even when they have the skills, training and expertise required.
The AI industry is a case in point. Rather than reflecting the full range of possible users, its workforce is largely made up of young men and runs the risk of developing apps and tools that reproduce these gender and age biases.
In fact, a growing body of research shows that older adults are consistently under-represented in the development of AI models. This makes those systems less accurate when it comes to recognising and responding to the needs or preferences of older users.
For example, a study of AI-generated images found that pictures of older people are consistently and systematically less bright and less sharp than images of younger people.
Lived experiences of ageing
At Concordia University, we’ve just completed a year-long community engagement project to gather perspectives and insights from older people about the future of ageing alongside AI. This project is part of a larger interdisciplinary research collaborative in the AI space at Concordia.
Our preliminary findings show older people worry that AI tools framed around ageing — such as fall detection or cognitive monitoring tools — are being designed by young developers who approach growing older as something to treat, manage or even prevent.
The health and wellness industry in particular is building new AI applications and tools at unprecedented rates — and these tools are increasingly designed for older people, older bodies and caregivers. While many of these tools offer up benefits like early disease diagnosis, symptom tracking and health promotion, they are not without their practical and ethical downsides.
Quality of care and transparency are paramount. A recent study of AI in health-care decision-making found some older adults are sceptical about AI’s ability to understand complex care needs, and generally preferred human interaction over AI engagement.
Older participants in this study also felt strongly that AI usage must be transparent and involve informed consent. In other words, older adults wanted to determine when and where they engage with AI.
Participants in our community engagement project echoed similar concerns. Several older community members discussed the importance of transparency in all things AI. Some even shared examples of times when they had interacted with AI chatbots for things like online banking support and thought they were chatting with a real person.
They believe their lived experiences of ageing, and their unique perspectives, are not being captured in the data training these new AI tools. Nor are they being used to determine what sorts of AI tools are getting built in the first place.
These concerns beg the question: Who is making decisions about AI, and for whom?
AI scams target older adults
Many of our participants raised fraud as a great example of this mismatch.
AI-enabled scams often target older adults, in part because they are seen as more trusting than younger adults.
Recently, for example, a fake CBC article began circulating on social media that showed Canadian journalist Adrienne Arsenault interviewing grocery tycoon Galen Weston Jr., who appeared to storm out part way through the interview. The event never happened. The images were AI-generated and the article was designed to scam people by promoting a fake investment platform.
Some participants in our dialogue suggested that AI itself could be built to help people spot this kind of fraud before it happens. They felt no one has asked them to provide input on how to combat fraud, despite being the prime targets of it.
Build with, not for, older adults
What older adults are asking for isn’t complicated. They want a say in what AI gets built, what data trains it and how it’s governed.
They want accessible ways to learn AI skills, ideally through institutions they already trust, like community organisations and schools. Several participants suggested short, library-based courses rather than more apps to download, feeling in-person learning would be most effective.
Several public libraries, including the Toronto Public Library, do already run AI literacy programming alongside their traditional digital skills classes.
Older adults also expressed unease and concern for others: concern for artists losing control over their work to generative AI, and a wish that people of all ages (not just older adults) could just “stay analogue” sometimes.
None of this is really about whether older adults can keep up with AI. Many of them are trying to. It’s about whether the people designing, training and governing these systems are willing to build them with older adults in the room, rather than building for them.
Older adults want a say in where AI is going next.
- is an Assistant Professor, Political Science, Concordia University
- This article first appeared in The Conversation
