The hesitation isn't refusal

Every skeptic leads with the same line: older people won't use AI. Laurie Orlov, who has watched aging-tech longer than most and sells none of it, says the data tells a quieter story. The hesitation isn't refusal — it's unfamiliarity. Confidence rises sharply the moment an older adult uses the thing and feels a real benefit, not a demo. That distinction matters for families. It means the job isn't convincing Mom that AI is the future; it's handing her one small thing that works — a reminder that actually fires, a fall alert that reaches you — and letting the experience do the persuading. Orlov is careful, too, about the labor shortage underneath all of this: she frames the realistic path as a hybrid of human care and AI — not the machine replacing the aide who never came, but stretching the help that already exists. Read it as a sanity check, not a sales pitch — which, coming from her, is rather the point.