Why Learning AI at 60 Years old Hits Different

I don’t care what Y’all say, I still don’t trust AI! Well, I like AI and the tools it has introduced to me but I don’t fully trust it. Just because I don’t trust something does not mean I won’t work with it.

Part of this article was created using AI. I said what I said! Growing up in the ’80s, seeing AI villains HAL (2001: A Space Odyssey), Skynet (The Terminator), Agent Smith (The Matrix) you would think I would be saying hell no to using AI at all let alone learning about it and using it as a creation tool! The same skepticism that makes me give AI the duck face side eye is the same thing making me want to know about it so I don’t get left behind. In other words, I am nosy and learning something new will always attract me.

The train is about to pull into the station of me turning sixty years old and remembering AI tools did not exist forty years ago. The most advanced computer-related items back in the day were the automated systems connected to making a phone call. Those memories include me not personally owning a computer until 1999, and high-tech was having a DSL Internet connection.

Having a corded phone attached to the wall, and thinking I had moved on up when I got a cordless phone! GPS was how well you could read a map and typically, having to know where you were going before you left the house, and when figuring something out usually meant asking somebody, reading a manual, or messing with it until you either solved it or got mad enough to walk away.

Now we have tools that can write, design, summarize, organize, research, brainstorm, and sometimes confuse the daylights out of you while acting like everything is simple. Six months ago, when I started my deep dive into AI looking at ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and a few others I was amazed by it. I typed anything and an answer came back with a follow-up to how I should proceed next. What the heck? My spider-sense was tingling to not totally trust it. It was so helpful, so nice, and maybe a bit too nice to the point of being toady-like. Just giving me what I wanted even if the idea was weak.

When I wrote for Full Figure Plus I typed every character, researched every idea, scoured the internet for everything, coding WordPress, and watching my blog blow up because I didn’t know what the hell I was doing! Now I have a tool available to me to do all the mundane things and things I may have never considered. Part of me wants to see how far I can push it because I have lived long enough to know that ignoring a major shift does not make it go away.

The closest thing to AI I had growing up was watching Sci-fi on TV. I remember a totally analog life, early internet life, blogging before social media swallowed the room, and enough technology changes to know that every new tool arrives with promises, confusion, and somebody trying to make money off the chaos. That makes me curious, but it also makes me cautious.

The funny part is that learning AI has made me feel like a beginner again. The biggest difference about learning AI is what I call a “drinking from a fire hydrant” moment. Learning while working leans into what Generation X was built on but it is also an uncomfortable lane to work in. After you have built up enough life experience, being new at something feels like walking into a room where everybody else already knows the dance. When I talk about AI stuff with my son, he wonders why I bother at all. To him AI is a fad that has no lasting value. That makes me want to learn everything about it even more!

With FFPC, the evolution of Full Figure Plus, AI has become part of the build. Not because I want a machine to replace my voice, which has been my major issue with the custom GPT agents I have built. I use it because I am building something with a lot of moving parts: blog posts, guides, images, email, research, products, Etsy listings, recipes, editorial planning, and old ideas that still need a place to land. AI, for now, ChatGPT, helps me sort the pile. It helps me move faster. It gives me something to argue with. It can be useful as long as I do not let it take the wheel.

That last part matters. In fact, this post was created in part by my editorial GPT. When I say part it took ideas I had and created the first draft of this post. I took things from there to tweak things so that Glen did not get buried in the shuffle. Once the new car smell wore off of using AI tools I started to notice things that I did not like. AI can flatten your voice if you let it.

I am not the best writer on the planet, but I know what I like and don’t like and did not like the formal nature of the content created fully by ChatGPT. I now understand the term “AI slop.” It can make everything sound correct but lifeless. It can turn a rough but honest idea into something smooth enough to be boring. I have been constantly under the hood tweaking the instructions for my AI assistants to stop rewriting this or any other content when all I wanted was punctuation fixed.

My style of writing is informal, tends to babble on about whatever, and I probably use more than my fair share of slang which is something my AI team still has not fully grasped. Remember me talking about not fully trusting AI? Yup, not doing what I want, but giving me a pleasant response is just being passive aggressive using pretty words!

There is a Gen X layer to this too. We were the bridge generation in a lot of ways. We grew up analog and had to adapt to digital.

We learned to use:

We learned all of this live without anybody slowing down to explain the shift. Though we are used to figuring things out, that does not mean every shift has been easy. It is freaking exhausting having to keep learning new systems while still carrying all the regular adult responsibilities.

Talking about this openly, letting you see the good, bad, and the ugly is against all the rules of blogging I learned all those years ago. But I know there are people my age who are curious about AI but do not want to feel foolish asking basic questions. I understand that because I am living it too. Since I was never part of the cool kids’ clique I just learned what I learned and talked about what I wanted to talk about. I KNOW I am not using everything that others are using and I am good with that.

I know just enough to not know what I know. But, the landscape is becoming clearer. The bottom line is I do not want AI to make me sound like the rest of the Internet. I was here before the Internet so I know things the Internet and AI don’t. But I do want it to help me get the work out of my head and into a form I can shape. I do not want it to replace my judgment. I do not want it to be the author of FFPC. I want it to be one of the tools on the bench, and I love tools!

Using a tool and being used by one is a very fine line when first starting to use AI. A hammer does not build a house by itself. There is a difference between how an apprentice and a journeyman looks at building. AI is no different. It can speed things up, but it does not know your lived experience unless you bring that experience into the room and keep correcting the machine when it gets too generic.

As I have made changes, created some things, and rejected others I have started to reflect on my confidence level. It has been quietly growing by the day. Giving me permission to say to myself, I may not know this yet, but I have learned hard things before. I can learn this too. I can take what is useful and leave what does not fit. I can try something new without pretending I have it all figured out.

I am still learning, testing, and getting annoyed with some AI suggestions. But I see the possibilities of using AI tools to make my voice echo louder than what can be created by letting the machine do all of the creating.

If you are trying to learn AI, or any new tool that feels like it showed up overnight and rearranged the furniture, you are not by yourself. The goal is not to become somebody else. The goal is to learn enough to stay capable, stay creative, and keep your own voice in the middle of all this noise.

What new tool have you had to learn later in life that made you feel like a beginner again?