A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions. —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Over the past few weeks I served as the middle person to AI-generated responses for family members. I would double check natural remedies for x, food recipes and 7-day at-home yoga plans. While there is YouTube and Facebook, TikTok seemed to be a stronger UI/ UX play. So today in an effort to get creating, than consuming, I bridged that gap on my mom and aunt’s devices. It started with sending them links to their WhatsApp or text, but it soon evolved to bringing the world’s known knowledge, thinking and structure to their fingertips.

Explaining hardware, software and now AI is tricky. The example and use case I used was a summer project in recycling large amount of yard debris. In my case we’d been taking debris to the local yard waste disposal facility— but this was costing more time and money. So I decided to store it locally and dispose of it through small yard waste batches. I then used ChatGPT for various recommendations centered on saving money and being friendly to the environment. My initial hunch was one of the recommendations. Ultimately, it designed a yard plan for where to store it, how and benefits. It was this example where my aunt knew AI was different than a regular internet search, YouTube video or her favorite app TikTok.

Installing ChatGPT on my mom’s iPhone wasn’t hard. She’s a bit more tech savvy and we’ve been using it while traveling to research our family tree. But installing ChatGPT on my aunt’s iPad took a little more time. First as is common, most don’t remember their install password so after working to secure it, we were able to document it and successfully download it onto her iPad (more about password management here. Throughout the process, she documented each step-by-step instruction, words+ icons, to remember the exact steps. It’s common for older adults to journal steps. Often we forget that journaling is key to remembering.

Once ChatGPT was installed, we started by adding three projects:

  • Medical, a place to learn more about natural remedies for x, y and z.
  • Recipes, a place to store recipes for birria de res, and other traditional regional plates.
  • Family, a place to create educational lessons plans for the grandchildren, but interestingly at this point is where curiosity sparked when my aunt requested a caricature of her granddaughter. After demonstrating how to add (+) an image and prompt the request, she double downed on one for her husband. While every rendered image request can take a bit, and internet can be spotty, we were ultimately successful.

The big smile on my aunt was worth every ounce of effort today. The two caricatures of her family and then sharing these was the highlight and power of AI adoption.

David Molina is an entrepreneur, strategist, and thinker–doer dedicated to exploring the full spectrum of human performance. Born to Mexican immigrant parents, he forged his path from farm fields to Captain in the U.S. Army, commissioner, and eventually to founding companies, nonprofits, and creative ventures. He shares more about health systems, business workflows, and intentional work on Instagram at @davidcmolina.