AI Tools for Seniors - What They Can and Can't Do
- Michael Routhier
- Apr 28
- 6 min read
Let me be honest with you before this post even gets going.
Every week I get emails, comments, and messages from people in this community asking some version of the same question: "Michael, should I be using AI? Is it as amazing as everyone keeps saying?"
And every week I give the same answer.
It depends entirely on who's doing the telling. Because the people shouting loudest about how transformative AI is; the investors, the shareholders, the tech CEOs on stage at conferences, and those people have a very specific reason to want you to believe the hype. And it has nothing to do with making your life better.
So let's have the honest conversation. The one nobody in Silicon Valley wants you to have.
First - A Quick Reality Check
I was talking with a man in our community recently. Retired accountant, 71, lives in Ottawa. Smart, methodical, the kind of person who reads the fine print before signing anything.
He'd been using one of the big AI chatbots for a few weeks, trying to get it to help him draft a letter to his insurance company about a disputed claim.
"It sounded very confident," he told me. "Very official. Very polished."
Then he read it carefully.
The AI had referenced a policy clause that didn't exist. Made it up. Stated it as fact. Confidently. Polished. Wrong.
He caught it because he's 71 and spent a career reading documents carefully. A less experienced reader might have sent that letter and had their credibility, and their claim, seriously damaged.
That's the thing about AI that the brochure doesn't mention.
What AI Actually Is - Stripped of the Marketing
Here's my plain-language version, after two years of testing, using, and watching these tools closely.
AI tools; ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Claude, and the rest, are extraordinarily capable autocomplete engines. They have processed more text than any human could read in a thousand lifetimes. They are very good at predicting what a plausible sounding response to your question looks like.
Note the word plausible. Not accurate. Not verified. Not true.
Plausible.
The AI doesn't know what it doesn't know. It doesn't flag uncertainty the way an honest person would. It doesn't say "actually, I'm not sure about that one." It fills the space with something that sounds like an answer and leaves the fact-checking entirely to you.
That is a tool. A genuinely useful one, in the right hands, for the right jobs. But a tool with a specific and significant limitation that the people selling it to investors would rather not dwell on.
What AI Is Actually Good At
I'm not here to tell you to throw your laptop out the window. Used honestly, with realistic expectations, there are things these tools do well. Really well.
Drafting and editing. Need a starting point for a letter, an email, a complaint to your building manager? AI is excellent at giving you a solid first draft that you then read, adjust, and own. The key word is draft. It's a starting point, not a finished product.
Summarizing long documents. Got a lengthy contract, a medical report, a government form that reads like it was written to confuse you? Paste it into an AI tool and ask for a plain-language summary. It does this well. Then read the original yourself too.
Answering general questions. "What is the difference between a Roth IRA and a TFSA?" "How does blood pressure medication work?" "What were the main causes of the Second World War?" For general, well-established factual questions, AI is genuinely useful, and faster than a Google search full of ads.
Brainstorming. Stuck on a decision? Use AI to generate options you may not have considered. It's good at breadth. You're good at judgment. That combination works.
Where It Falls Short - And Why This Matters for You
Anything recent. Most AI models have a knowledge cutoff, a date beyond which they simply don't know what happened. Ask about something from the last six months and you may get confident, outdated, or fabricated information.
Medical and legal specifics. This is the category I feel most strongly about. AI can give you a general overview of a health condition or a legal concept. It cannot replace your doctor or your lawyer. It doesn't know your history, your medications, your circumstances. And when it's wrong in these areas, the consequences aren't a bad email. They're serious.
Personal financial advice. AI doesn't know your situation. It knows averages and generalities. Your financial life is neither average nor general.
Anything requiring actual judgment. And this is the big one.
The Thing AI Cannot Do - And Why Your Experience Is the Asset
Marcus Aurelius wrote: "You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength."
He wrote that while running an empire, managing wars, and watching people around him reach for easy answers to hard problems. His answer, every time, was to go inward. To trust the judgment built by a life of paying attention.
AI is an outside event. It is a tool. It has no stake in your wellbeing, no understanding of your particular life, no accumulated wisdom about what actually matters to you.
What it cannot replicate, not now, not in the version coming next year, not in the version after that, is the judgment you have built over a lifetime of actual experience.
You've navigated recessions. You've raised families. You've managed careers, illnesses, losses, and the kind of complicated human situations that no training dataset can fully capture. That's not obsolete. That is precisely what makes you the right person to use these tools wisely and to know when to put them down.
The investors want you to feel like AI is smarter than you. Like you should defer to it, trust it, let it think for you.
Don't.
Use it as a research assistant, not an authority. Use it as a starting point, not a conclusion. And always, always apply the thing it doesn't have, your own hard-won judgment.
The Tools Worth Knowing (With Honest Notes)
Since you came here for a comparison, here's one. Brief, honest, no hype.
ChatGPT (OpenAI) — The most well-known. Good for drafting, explaining concepts, brainstorming. Tends toward confidence even when uncertain. Free version is capable; paid version (Plus) adds some useful features. Verify anything factual before you use it.
Google Gemini — Google's version. Integrated with Google Search, which means it can pull more current information than most. Still makes errors. Useful for quick summaries and general questions. Better for anything where recency matters.
Microsoft Copilot — Built into Windows 11 and Microsoft 365. If you're already using Word or Outlook, Copilot can help draft documents, summarise emails, and assist with writing tasks without leaving your existing programs. The most practical option for people already inside the Microsoft ecosystem.
Claude (Anthropic) — Less well-known, but arguably the most careful writer of the group. Tends to hedge appropriately when uncertain, which, after reading the section above, you'll understand why I consider that a feature rather than a bug. Good for longer, more nuanced writing tasks.
The honest summary; None of them are magic. All of them require you. The tool is only as good as the judgment of the person using it.
What Epictetus Would Tell You About AI
Epictetus, a Stoic philosopher who started life as a slave and became one of history's most important thinkers, had one core teaching that has outlasted every empire that dismissed it.
Divide everything into what is in your control and what is not.
The AI boom, the investor hype, the platform decisions, the companies choosing to push these tools faster than the safety work can keep up, none of that is in your control.
What is in your control, whether you use these tools deliberately. Whether you bring your own judgment to everything they produce. Whether you decide what earns your trust rather than outsourcing that decision to a press release.
That's not a small thing. In a moment when the entire industry is trying to make you feel like you're behind, like the technology has passed you, like you should defer to the machine; choosing to engage on your own terms, with your own critical eye, is actually the most sophisticated response available.
The most powerful position you can take with AI isn't fear and it isn't uncritical acceptance.
It's informed skepticism. And nobody is better positioned for that than someone who has spent decades watching industries promise revolution and deliver mixed results.
What's been your experience with AI tools so far? Have you tried one and found it genuinely useful, or have you had a moment where it was confidently, completely wrong? Drop it in the comments. I read every single one. And if you've been sitting on the fence about whether to try any of these tools at all, tell me that too, because that's a completely valid place to be, and you're not alone.
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