My parents are competent, tech-savvy (for their age) professionals and I have been trying to get them to use LLMs more, in the sense of “This is better than Google, there are tasks you already do that would be better done via Claude than however you’re doing them now.” This has been ineffective. They will nod along in vague agreement as I describe cutting edge capabilities, and the next day I will see them spend five minutes Googling something Claude could’ve handled in seconds.
I have also preached the AI gospel to friends who are 30-40 years younger than my parents and that has worked much better, sometimes a single five minute conversation is enough to get a convert.
I think this is mostly a manifestation of the mysterious general factor of “Old people are slow to adopt new technology”. I still want to onboard my parents with the shiny new labour-saving technology, does anyone have experience on how to overcome normal human laziness/aversion to change?
Interestingly, “tech-savvy” might actually be cutting against your goal insofar as your parents already have an affordance for doing the tasks they want to do? I think a contributing factor to my successfully turning my lonely, non-tech-savvy mother onto Claude is that she didn’t already have anything perceived as a equivalent. You can’t complain to Google that your daughter doesn’t call often enough, but Claude listens and has a reassuring reply.
My parents are competent, tech-savvy (for their age) professionals and I have been trying to get them to use LLMs more, in the sense of “This is better than Google, there are tasks you already do that would be better done via Claude than however you’re doing them now.” This has been ineffective. They will nod along in vague agreement as I describe cutting edge capabilities, and the next day I will see them spend five minutes Googling something Claude could’ve handled in seconds.
I have also preached the AI gospel to friends who are 30-40 years younger than my parents and that has worked much better, sometimes a single five minute conversation is enough to get a convert.
I think this is mostly a manifestation of the mysterious general factor of “Old people are slow to adopt new technology”. I still want to onboard my parents with the shiny new labour-saving technology, does anyone have experience on how to overcome normal human laziness/aversion to change?
Interestingly, “tech-savvy” might actually be cutting against your goal insofar as your parents already have an affordance for doing the tasks they want to do? I think a contributing factor to my successfully turning my lonely, non-tech-savvy mother onto Claude is that she didn’t already have anything perceived as a equivalent. You can’t complain to Google that your daughter doesn’t call often enough, but Claude listens and has a reassuring reply.