How to Make AI Work for You

For example, electronic room sensors and “smart inserts” can be strategically placed on beds, chairs and elsewhere around a house or senior living facility to “passively” monitor a person’s daily routines and certain health metrics, without the use of intrusive cameras or microphones. Real-time alerts can be sent to caregivers if, say, the person gets out of bed at an unusual hour without returning.

And a “virtual care agent” can pick up sounds from pods plugged in around the house that may detect whether an adult is lying on the floor. If so, caregivers are immediately contacted.

Doctor Visit Prep

Telemedicine was brought on by necessity during the pandemic, but it now appears to be a permanent fixture of the health care system. While remotely connecting via smartphone, tablet or computer lessens the need for in-person doctor visits, you will still, of course, have to see a medical provider for something serious.

When you do go see a doctor, AI could help you come up with questions to ask, says AARP chief executive Dr. Myechia Minter-Jordan, a physician. “This a way for patients to make the most of that 15- or 30-minute visit,” she says.

What you should not do is enter your symptoms into an AI chatbot and attempt to self-diagnose.

AI chatbots such as Anthropic's Claude, ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot and Google’s Gemini are notorious for providing unreliable information, and no matter how plausible an answer may sound, it may well be made up, what the tech industry refers to as hallucinations. Health-related hallucinations are dangerous and potentially deadly, and even factual outcomes may scare a patient or be misunderstood.

We cannot expect AI to replace doctors, Minter-Jordan cautions. “We can enable patients to better engage with their providers in ways that improve health care decision-making,” she says. But if AI gets it wrong, patients and their doctors “can course correct.”

Karandeep Singh, a physician and chief health AI officer at UC San Diego Health, says to use a chatbot like this: “You might type, ‘You are an oncologist. I have a question about cancer,’ ” Singh says. Then you might want to follow up with “Make sure the answers are super easy for me to understand. I don’t know much about health lingo” before typing a specific medical question. This can provide good talking points for your doctor visit, but be sure to confirm any information with that medical professional. He suggests adding "look it up" at the end of your instructions to the chatbot, and to perform a web search for each answer, with clickable links to sources.

Accessibility for Motor Skills, Low Vision Challenges

The latest smartphones have AI-fueled features to help people who don’t see or hear well or have issues with motor skills. Explore the accessibility settings on your device.

For example, the Guided Frame feature on Google’s Pixel can help a person with limited vision snap a selfie. The feature detects when one or more people, or even pets, are in or out of the frame. Audio, visual or vibration cues provide instructions on how to position the phone.

Apple iPhones let you clone your voice. Then you can type phrases on the keyboard as the phone reads them aloud in your voice. Though initially designed for people with conditions that put their ability to speak at risk — such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) — anyone can take advantage of this Personal Voice feature.

Entertainment Choices Abound

Finding what you want to watch on TV is an age-old problem. These days, there’s so much to choose from.

Netflix is addressing the issue with the help of ChatGPT creator OpenAI. It has begun rolling out an AI search tool in iOS that will let you find content on Netflix according to your mood rather than just a particular actor or genre. You could say into the microphone, “I want to watch something scary — but not too scary and also maybe a little bit funny but not ha-ha funny,” and recommendations appear.

In a similar vein for streaming music, premium Spotify customers can create AI playlists with tunes for a mood or occasion. You might enter “Romantic songs to celebrate my 25th wedding anniversary,” “The best karaoke songs of all time” or “Great songs to come out of the movies.”