Applied AgeTech in Real Life is a three-part series from AARP Research and the AgeTech Collaborative™ from AARP. Each installment translates lived consumer experience into practical insights for designers, innovators, startups, and media. The series is grounded in qualitative research with older adults across the Active, Supported, and Assisted stages of the aging journey.
This installment focuses on AI and Independence, the value older adults guard most fiercely — and the one AI is just as likely to erode as to protect. It examines how older adults are already using AI to stay self-reliant, where it tips from support into something that feels like surveillance, and what the field would need to do differently to earn trust.
Read the previous installment in the series: The Desire and the Reality of Aging in Place.