Amazing Ways Seniors Can Use AI Every Day

Hello everyone, Ron Brown here from Tech for Senior. Now be honest, how many of you thought AI was just another tech fad for the grandkids? Maybe even something that you might thought might take over the world. Well, relax. This isn’t science fiction. It’s senior friendly science. Today, we’re going to talk about AI for everyday life. how it can make your day a little easier, save some money, and maybe even make you laugh. And don’t worry, no programming, no passwords, and definitely no robots chasing you around the living room. Let’s start by admitting something for many seniors. AI sounds, well, uh, complicated, but once you see what it can do, you’ll wonder how you’ve ever lived without it. Let’s face it, there are a few reasons why many seniors are hesitant to jump into this whole AI thing. Let’s go through them with a little humor, of course. The first is the fear of the unknown. When people hear artificial intelligence, they picture hell from 2001, a space odyssey. No, AI won’t lock you out of your house or read your mind, but it might remind you that you’re out of coffee. Barrier two, too much jargon. AI, Chachi, PT, Gemini, large language model. It sounds like science fiction alphabet soup. I used to think that a large language model was something that you ordered at Sears. Barrier three, privacy worries. Yes, privacy is important, but AI isn’t spying on you. It’s just using what you tell it to to help you get the answers faster. I asked Chast GPT for a rhubarb pie recipe. It remembered I hate raisins. Now that’s smart. Barrier 4 is over complicated interfaces. Now be honest, we’ve been we’ve all been there. You open an app and there are 14 buttons to push and you need a new password. I swear half of the technology is just inventing new ways to reset your password. And barrier 5 is sort of like feeling left behind. Our grandkids are using AI to write essays. We just want help ordering groceries. The good news, AI now speaks plain English. No degree required. Just talk to it. Okay, barriers smashed. Let’s look and see what AI can actually do for you. All right. So, now we’re in chat GPT. I entered in a search to find the best deal on coffee pods at Walmart. So, the answer to this was, and remember I’m in Canada, so they’re looking at the Canadian site. Here are the best priced coffee pod options at Walmart Canada right now. Uh, if you’re simply hunting for a deal, note that the counts per box vary. Now, it is they noticed a problem in that in that they want to know if I’m looking for curig or Nespresso. Anyway, quick take the cheapest box prices. It gives me some ideas there. Some solid name brand values. If you use Nespresso, what to look for? And then it says, “Want me to narrow this CURIG versus Nespresso?” And I think we’ll stick with Kurig. And let’s uh let’s keep a budget because we’re budget-minded seniors and we want less than 50 cents. So I’m going to type in here cure egg and then do a search. And here we are. Uh great value. It tells you exactly uh what we’re looking for and it gives you some thoughts here. And if we click this, it takes us right to the Walmart site where you can actually order it. You saw that we clicked over here and it took us right over to Walmart. We’ll go to Walmart.ca. CA and it’s going to bring up the uh our account at Walmart and you can order them. So, as we come down here, it’s given all sorts of examples, more information. Uh why under 50 cents? Is it unrealistic? What you can try instead. Bottom line is no curig pods under 50 cents exist currently or at least not any visible listings on Walmart Canada. All right. So, couldn’t find any, but there were lots of other ones here. If you like, I can dig into bulkless sailors or close out deals, not only Walmart. So, you can keep going on and on with this. And it’s a it’s a great way to look at shopping. You don’t have to leave your own home. And how simple is this? All right. I’d now like to look at how you can use it to do investigative work on items that you might have found online. This doesn’t necessarily have to be on Amazon. It could be on any online site that you want. The example I’m going to give you today is uh um a product I just bought on Amazon. Now, I’ve been having a little pain in my shoulder shoulder, probably some arthritis, and I wanted to buy a new heating pad. I did a search on Amazon. Well, you know me and Amazon, the truck stops daily at my house, but I wanted to do a little investigation on this particular heating pad and see if it was a good one. And this is I actually did buy this one, but this is the one that I’m going to do some investigation on. But this will work on any product you want to buy wherever you are in the internet. So, this is a little trick I’m going to show you. What you’re going to do is you’re going to come up now and at the top of the search here, this is what we call a URL. This is this is a link that identifies this particular product on Amazon. What we’re going to do is we’re going to select this and I’m going to rightclick and say copy. And now we’re going to paste this into chat GPT. And let’s see what we find. Okay, we’re back over on this is of course chat GPT. Uh, I’m just simply going to paste the URL into into um the search bar. And at the end, I’m just going to type in evaluate. And let’s see what happens. So, it immediately finds the item. Uh, and then it’s going to give me a whole bunch of stuff. what the listing says, what the pro and con features are, potential limitations. The analysis it gives, it’s going to go and it’s going to tell you uh what it thinks. Um, and its analysis of this particular product is this seems like a solid midupper tier heating pad. Uh, the features are compatible. uh multiple heat sensors, moist dry region, long cord, gives a bunch of reasons why this is probably a good buy. Then at the very end, it says uh if you tell me you intend to use it for back pain, neck and general, da da da da da, I can compare this to alternatives and see whether this is a good choice for your needs. Do you want me to check user reviews and comparison? And I’m going to say yes. And let’s see what happens. And here it gives all the reviews, heat performances, awareness, it goes on weaknesses, complaints, uh how it stacks up for different uses. Um and it goes on and on and discusses alternative heating pad options worth considering. It gives you some other ones here that you might want to purchase. And it goes on and on a lot of the final verdict. Uh again, it is a lot of information that took seconds to find. Just copy that URL into chat GPT and say evaluate. It can’t get any easier than that. All right, let’s talk about another great feature you can use AI for. And that is cooking. Now, out of all the things that seniors can use AI for, I think cooking is one of the most impressive things it can do for you. Uh, I could do a whole show just on cooking, but in a nutshell, one of the problems when you’re a senior, there’s just my wife and I in the house. So, when I want recipes, I want them for two people. Most recipes you find online are for four or six. So, that’s the first problem. So, the recipes that you can create or you can adjust on in AI, you can just ask it to make a recipe for two people. The second is is we often have leftovers. And I had some salmon the other day. Um, and it was salmon and I was sitting around wondering what I was going to do with it. And I thought, hm, [clears throat] I’m going to make a salmon casserole. And so for two and uh, and I did. It turned out it was a simple recipe. They gave it to me. AI gave it to me. I just told it what I had. It created the casserole and it was great. It was absolutely a wonderful casserole. I’ll see if I got a picture of it. I think I do. I’ll show I’ll put it online and uh I’ll show you how it turned out. But it was great. This morning I got up. I said to my wife, “What would you like for breakfast?” I always do breakfast. She said, “I like pancakes.” So I asked Chat GPT for a recipe for pancakes for two. Here’s what I just did this an hour ago and here it came up. Here’s the ingredients. The I don’t need the instructions. And you can add some blueberries or bananas in. And then it says, uh, would you like me to dra adapt it for whole wheat or gluten-free pancakes? Well, if I wanted to do that, it’s there, too. Let’s just see what it Let’s ask it. And, uh, it’s going to come up with gluten-free uh, versions of this. And it just quickly comes up and there you go. So, it is so important that this is a huge benefit for seniors. I think if you’re living at home, you’re doing some cooking, it’s great. This is you should be using this every day. It’s an everyday thing that I use and I I couldn’t be without it now. So, the next thing you should be using AI for is asking technical questions uh around technology. If you’re watching this, you probably have a computer or a cell phone or something that you’ve had some questions about. doesn’t always work as as as it should. And where do you ask those technical questions? Well, AI is a great place to go. Uh it can give you really good answers. It can drill down on specific problems if you’re having trouble connecting your printer. It can it can zoom right into things that you can try and do. So, it is a great resource and it’s so simple to do. I’ll give you an example. Yesterday I was mowing the grass. It was 4:30 in the afternoon. I was listening to YouTube m music on my uh earbuds and it stopped playing about 4:30. I know that cuz I looked at my watch and it uh I I couldn’t get it going. So I came into the studio a little bit later and thought, hm, better check this. And I couldn’t get on YouTube. I’d never seen this before. Uh you it ended up YouTube was down. Um, nothing wrong with my at least I couldn’t see anything wrong with my system, but I just asked um you I asked chat GPT if there were any broadcast outages problems with YouTube. Now, this occurred immediately. I was in the studio immediately after this occurred, so it was too early for that information to flow through, but it did give me some troubleshooting things that I could try. I I sort of suspected it was probably something not within my control. and by the next day they had the worldwide outage which was a big deal uh fixed. But technical issues are great. You can solve those and you should be using AI to help with those problems. And it doesn’t matter if it’s technical stuff like computer stuff. If you have any plumbing problems, any sort of problems around the house, just ask AI. It’s so simple. All right. Now, I’m going to show you the mobile chat GPT app. Now, you can use Gemini, Copilot, whatever you feel most comfortable with. They all have different flavors, but I exclusively or pretty much exclusively use Chat Gebt, so I feel very comfortable with it. So, that’s what I’m going to show you. I’m going to show you two features of the mobile app that you as a senior should be using in the grocery store every time you’re shopping. It’s going to save you a lot of money. So, let me show you the first feature that is so simple to use. Now, I will say that I did have a lot of trouble getting this recording because of the technology and the way these phones work. It wasn’t able to capture the image on the phone. So, I had to use an other phone to capture the phone that I was using. Anyway, we got it done. Now, I did do it in my kitchen and my wife’s doing the recording of me on the phone, but you’ll get the idea. Now, in this picture, I’m going to start chat GPT live. This is a different version of chat GPT. Well, it you sort of hit a little extra button and this allowed you just to like having the grocery store manager right there with you. You just ask a question and you’ll see me getting the uh chat GPT live up. You’ll see me adding the image and us having a little discussion about this product, which I had no idea what it was. So, let’s have a look and see how this goes. It’s a lot of fun and something you should be doing every time you’re shopping. Now, the other thing though, this is very internet dependent. Now, some stores such as uh Walmart are very very internet dependent and provide good Wi-Fi for you while you’re in the store. You have the other stores like Costco which are not. And in our Costco, it’s a there is no uh Wi-Fi and it’s very difficult even to get um cellular signal in these great big concrete stores. So, it depends where you are. But if you have an internet friendly store, uh, this works extremely well. So, let’s have a look and see what I did. Okay, we’re now I’m going to open up chat GPT on my phone and we’re going to come down to the right hand side here over to the chat GPT live. I’m going to click this and we’re going to open up the this is chat GPT live. Now, I’m going to ask it. Can you help me with an image? Absolutely. Feel free to let me know what kind of image you need or what you’re looking to do, and I’ll be happy to help you out with it. All right. Here’s an image. What is this? Ah, so that looks like a kabocha squash. It’s kind of a winter squash. Typically has that dark green rind and bit of a flattened shape. If you’re wondering what to do with it, it’s really tasty roasted or in soups. Let me know if you need more info. That’d be great. Um, how do you tell if it’s ripe or not? Yeah, definitely. So, with a kabocha squash, usually if it’s ripe, it feels pretty heavy for its size and the skin’s going to be kind of a deep dull green rather than a shiny green. Uh, sometimes the stem area that it’s had time to mature. Also, if you give it a gentle knock and it sounds kind of hollow, that’s another hint that it’s good and ready to go. So, those little cues should help you out. Do you know what the cost of this locally would be? [snorts] So, locally in Canada right now, a kabocha squash can run roughly between about 12 to 17 Canadian dollars per kilogram, depending on where you’re shopping. So, that should give you a ballpark idea. Okay. Thanks so much. All right. Now, the second part of the app we’re going to use is not so much internet dependent, although you will need a Wi-Fi connection. And this is where we’re not going to use Chat GPT live. We are just going to take an image and have it get some information for us. So, I’m in the grocery store and I’ve clicked that little button. You’ll see here there’s a little button to the left and if you click that, you can create an image from your camera. So, I did that. I’m in the cheese section and you’ll see here that we have some Dubliner cheese up up on the screen here. You’ll see that. Now, a good question would be, is this a good price? I want to buy some cheese. Is this a good price? How do you instantly get this compared to all the other cheeses by the other grocery stores in town? So, let’s have a look. So, basically, you would just click this. Now, it’s going to ask you a couple of questions here. And why do we want this? And why do we want this? And I said, is this a good price? So then, uh, it responds and tells me from the photo. It looks like tells me what we’re looking at here. And then now it’s comparing this to other stores in my area. Remember, I’m just standing in the grocery store aiming my phone at the cheese and it’s now taking and comparing it to all the other cheeses in town. Is a good price. Um, well, uh, reserve cheddar at 10.49 is very close to a typical retail pricing. Doubliner 949 is somewhat on the higher side relative to some other pricing. So, yes, it’s not an outrageous price. you’re paying for premium cheese and import costs, so it’s not shocking. All right, so that’s something that you can use in your everyday shopping trip to get you the best deals and the best price, and it’s right on your smartphone. So, there you have it. Different ways AI can make your life a little simpler, a little smarter, and maybe a little more fun. Remember, you don’t need to understand how it works. You just need to use it. From groceries to health care, travel to companionship, AI is already part of your everyday life. So, this week, try one thing. Ask Chat GiPT or Gemini a question you’d normally Google. You’ll be amazed how easy it is. And if this video made you smile, give it a thumbs up, share it with a friend, and remind them that AI doesn’t stand for Aunt Irene, though she might enjoy it, too. So, see you next week on Tech for Senior. Hopefully, you have a good week. I’m Ron Brown. See you soon.