Inside an AI class for retirees who don't want to be left behind

A room of about 15 retirees in their 60s and 70s gathered in Singapore for a four-hour community class on AI run by Asif Saleem. They hunched over laptops, grilled the instructor with questions, scribbled notes, and reacted out loud as they tested models and tools.

Susanna Lau, 70, laughed when a chatbot generated what she called "an extravagant Hokkien mee," and others tried prompts to see what AI could do for hobbies, travel memories, and everyday tasks. The session began with the basics — what AI and large language models are, and how multimodal systems work — before moving to prompting practice using Google’s Gemini to generate images and ideas.

Participants turned fusion-dish prompts into full recipes, names, and ingredient suggestions, and produced travel postcards by superimposing themselves into AI-generated scenes. Ann Seow, 60, said AI’s "ability to understand language and create its own interpretative work" opened "immense possibilities" for retirement activities, learning, or small businesses.

Singapore

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