Susanna Lau, 70, squinted at the screen and laughed.
AI chatbot She was playing, cooking what she describes as “luxurious Hokkien mee,” a Singaporean dish of stir-fried noodles in seafood soup.
Around her, 15 retirees in their 60s and 70s hunched over laptops, tinkering with AI models, often reacting loudly to what they can do.
Asif Saleem, head of financial services market development for Japan and Asia Pacific at Google, was running the session as a community class in Singapore.
Retirees were stuck at home for more than four hours asking questions, testing prompts, and figuring out what AI could do for them.
Some came out of fear of being left behind. Some people had doubts. However, all were keen to develop their skills. This is proof that learning doesn’t stop with age.
Raise your hand, lots of questions
The first hour was spent teaching the basics of what AI is, what large-scale language models are, and how multimodal AI works.
The questions came quickly. The retirees interrupted Saleem to ask about AI videos they had seen on social media, whether they were trustworthy and what happens when personal data is entered into a chatbot.
Asif Saleem deploys tools at an AI workshop in Singapore. Chung Min Lee/Business Insider
After answering their questions, Saleem moved on to teaching the prompts. He started with a low-risk use case: using Google’s Gemini to generate images.
Retirees asked AI to design unique fusion dishes that leveraged hobbies that many retirees already loved.
After generating a Chinese-Japanese fusion dish similar to Hokkien Mee, Lau learned how to prompt the AI to do more work. She asked me to generate a complete recipe, suggest a possible name (“Umami no Mori Lo Mien”), and even recommend additional ingredients that could be added to upgrade the dish.
I asked her if she would like to try cooking at home. She paused, then laughed. “I’ll think about it.”
Retiree Susanna Lau used AI to create a Chinese-Japanese fusion noodle dish. Chung Min Lee/Business Insider
Another practice quickly stuck. It’s about creating travel postcards.
The retirees had the AI generate images from past trips, including saunas in Japan, beaches in Thailand, and seaside views in Croatia. They superimposed themselves on the scene and turned the image into a postcard that they could send to friends.
Anne Sow, 60, said she was impressed by AI’s “ability to understand language and create unique interpretations that are like works of art.”
He added that AI opens up “enormous possibilities” for what people can do in retirement, such as finding new hobbies, learning new skills or even starting a business.
Power your work with AI
Next, the class was introduced to NotebookLM, Google’s research and note-taking tool.
Initially, I was skeptical about introducing this tool to retirees. NotebookLM is typically promoted as a productivity tool for students, researchers, and office workers.
Saleem was quick to show why that assumption is not true. He taught me how to upload a report to NotebookLM and turn it into a summary, not just text, but audio, visuals, mind maps, and even presentation slides.
For the elderly people in attendance, the appeal was immediate. Instead of staring at a 100-page document, listen to a verbal summary or capture key ideas through a visual map.
“How do we know the information is accurate?” one participant asked.
It was a well-known concern. AI systems can hallucinate and produce inaccurate answers. Saleem acknowledged the risks, but pointed out key differences with NotebookLM. That means it only gets information from user-uploaded sources, not the open internet.
Sou was visibly impressed. “That would have saved me a lot of time when creating PowerPoint slides,” she said.
“What used to take days to do by hand now takes just seconds,” said Cindy Ann, another retiree.
“It seems like there will be more positive things to do with AI. I was wondering why we should be afraid of AI,” Anne added.
Retiree Cindy Ann said she has learned to embrace AI rather than reject it. Chung Min Lee/Business Insider
Engage AI in unique ways
In the final segment of the class, the upperclassmen were to try vibecoding a simple web app on their own. Time is up.
Saleem gave a quick demo of how easy it is to vibecode an app using Google AI Studio. In minutes, he created a Chinese New Year app that identifies and explains his zodiac sign.
The retirees watched intently. Once the app was activated, the room was filled with excited chatter.
Speaking after class, Anne said she initially arrived with “mixed feelings.”
She wanted to learn AI skills because she feared she would become “irrelevant.” At the same time, she was on guard. “What happens if the AI gets out of control?” she said.
By the end of the workshop, she was convinced that older adults “need to engage with AI, not reject it.”
“AI is definitely here to stay. Whether we like it or not, we have to be involved in it,” she said.
“But it’s important not to rely completely on AI. We forget that we’re using the human brain,” she added.
Cindy Ang, a retiree, kept asking the instructor questions during an AI class for seniors in Singapore. Chung Min Lee/Business Insider
Seow said she found learning about AI beneficial, but she is concerned that the AI era is widening what she calls the “information divide.”
“Older adults did not grow up using smartphones, tablets and digital services, so they may be slower to grasp technology concepts,” she explained.
During the session, many notes were scribbled furiously while Saleem spoke. They also asked him probing questions and rarely accepted explanations at face value.
When I later asked Ann if she would write me a letter about her reflections, she said, “What if I used AI to help me?”
