By Jack Cumming
It’s no surprise that artificial intelligence was a hot topic at this year’s LeadingAge meeting in Nashville. LeadingAge had an early morning session with a panel of representative provider member technologists. Representative of the range of LeadingAge’s not-for-profit membership, there was an innovative single-site provider (Cypress Cove), a respected multi-facility provider (Kendal Corporation), and a niche provider from the hurricane-ravaged area of North Carolina (Givens Communities).
Other Interested People
The presentations were interesting and mostly introductory, though Kurt Rahner spoke of neural networks and deep learning. There were no residents on the panel. One provider did refer to a resident technology committee, but a committee can be no stronger than its most capable, most knowledgeable member. As a resident of 18 years, I was disappointed that across this vast nation, LeadingAge could find no resident for such a panel.
Not only am I a resident, but I’m also an actuary. Joe Velderman, a thought leader for technology in senior living, impressed me by knowing that Alan Turing was influenced by Ed Berkeley’s early book on AI. Berkeley was an actuary using computers to manage the millions of client records of Prudential Insurance. His book was published in 1949. If you know the history, you know that 1949 was very early for what we now call the AI revolution.
In 1949, Alan Turing, Berkeley, and others were then just beginning to see the potential for computers to automate and improve many facets of human intelligence. What is now obvious, for instance, is that computers have better memories than we. We’ve also long known that machines can do calculations faster than we can, and that machines don’t tire. Less apparent beyond cognoscenti is that computers have also long been better than people at analytical processing and organization of results for decision-making.
As a resident and an actuary, I couldn’t help but think of how senior living might have advanced more quickly in deploying technology to address aging, if the likes of Bob Link, a brilliant thinker who was a resident at Essex Meadows in Connecticut, or of similarly distinguished residents were utilized by the industry. We’re at our best as a society when we make use without fear or favor of all the talents that can improve the human condition.
Back to the Here and Now
The panelists at the LeadingAge morning session were excited about the newest super capabilities, of which the most practical was that AI bots can quickly bring a trainee up close to expert mastery by acting as an advisory companion. That companion, a bot, may whisper in the trainee’s AirPod, allowing the trainee to quickly become productive.
Scott Code, LeadingAge’s lead man for technology, presented the results of the Harvard / Boston Consulting Group study establishing how augmented intelligence can quickly bring a newcomer to corporate consulting up to near the level of a long-experienced expert consultant. Now, corporate consulting is a business that generally requires the best thinkers, but even great thinkers need training. That AI can enhance results in such an undertaking is remarkable.
The Harvard / Boston Consulting Group study, though, also revealed a key limitation of artificial intelligence. While it generally provides novices with correct guidance, helping them to quickly get up to speed near the pace of the experts, it also sometimes did not provide “correct solutions.” AI is a useful tool, extraordinarily useful, but it requires supervision. As this study suggests, critical thinking is needed to confirm the reasonableness of what AI produces.
Impact on Education
After the basic skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic have been mastered, say, by fourth grade, the teaching of thinking is central to education. Of these, writing is most important because it creates a record to which the writer can return, after reading and thinking, to see if she or he still agrees with that earlier thinking.
It is that critical look at one’s own thinking and at the thinking of others through reading that develops discernment and good judgment. That is the process by which learning most productively takes place. You likely remember what you wrote as a student more than you remember what grade you got, what the teacher taught, or the name of a textbook.
The alternative to critical thinking is the authority of textbook interpretation in which one simply memorizes what the textbook proclaims. Very few teachers instruct their students to question the veracity or even the rationale of a textbook. Still, that skeptical use of an apparent authority (AI) is now the skill that will be needed if we are to prepare people to use the tools of artificial intelligence.
AI will require a transformation in our schools. That will require a reeducation of our teachers to focus on these critical skills, particularly writing, not as a red-ink grammar/syntax exercise, but as instruction in clear thinking. Already, schools are struggling to decide whether to embrace AI as a teaching tool or to prohibit it as “cheating.” The students, though, are there to learn for their futures, and their futures will include AI.
Looking Forward
Residents will be the key to the coming technology revolution as it impacts senior living. That revolution is in its infancy. Only now are the data and computing power finally emerging to enable the astounding capabilities of neural networks. That advance, which I ascribe to Geoffrey Hinton of the University of Toronto and to Stanford’s Fei-Fei Li, operates on the conjecture that, if you want to improve human intelligence, you should start by mimicking how the human brain works. That wasn’t possible till now, but it turns out that it does work, and it’s better than traditional deterministic thinking.
Back to the morning session in Nashville. The panelists were all corporate, so it’s not surprising that their thinking tends to be corporate. For instance, “We’re a Microsoft shop, so naturally we use Copilot, which requires an annual commitment and is very costly if you pay for a number of seats.” $30 per user per month is indeed mighty pricey. Better options are beginning to emerge. My guess is that Microsoft may not be the surviving technology any more than Netscape survived the internet revolution.
But, that’s just my business judgment, and business judgment can often be wrong. Just ask Kodak, or Boeing, or General Electric. There will be winners and losers from the AI opportunity. Including customers, residents in the case of senior living, will be critical to success. The Nashville panel was well-informed and knowledgeable. The implications for society in general, and senior living in particular, go well beyond what is now in evidence.
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I am an 80 year-old resident who has been using ChatGPT since it was first released in November 2023. I use for research for projects, planning, drafting emails, and writing outlines for presentations that I do on computer topics.
My current AI tools are Claude and Perplexity. Perplexity provides footnotes with a list of the websites where the information is found.
It helps jumpstart my thinking so I am not faced with a blank page when I start on a project. My current interest is ageism and ableism topics with a focus on accessibility.