I am so gosh-darned tired of the old age stereotype and being pigeon-holed because of bring over 50. I just turned 70 and I am still teaching cybersecurity and powershell at a university. The West is shooting itself in the foot by looking down at its aging populace and valuing youth. Right now there are so many positions needing to be filled and they're not being filled because of age snobbery.
Then they have the colossal gall and nerve to cry the poor mouth because there are no workers. Pul-eeeeeze!!!
Super interesting! In the UK we have issues with an increasing number of working age adults unable due to work due to ill health — the disability employment gap — which increases with age. AI definitely has scope to be enabling. But will it impact the disability employment gap equally across age groups?? Hard to tell
Too much of the current AI narrative is built on implicit techno-optimism — the idea that more automation means more progress, by default. What this piece surfaces, with sharp clarity, is the cost of that assumption: systems that invisibilise experience, dismiss age as inefficiency, and quietly encode a cultural obsession with newness.
As someone building AI tools for strategic transformation, I think about this often. The bias isn’t just in the data — it’s in the design assumptions, in the workflows that centre speed over depth, and in the language we use to describe “legacy knowledge.” We’re not just building tools. We’re shaping how people think about value.
It’s not enough to audit datasets for bias. We need to confront the structural logic we’ve inherited — and often replicated — in the name of innovation.
Thanks for naming the pattern so clearly. This isn’t just about AI. It’s about the stories we decide to code into the future.
AI equaling human reasoning is a technocratic fantasy. AI researchers has been over hyping its results since the 1960s. Lots of useful “micro-AI” applications including predicting 3-d protein folding are useful, good tools. AI is obsessed with duplicating human level competence (general AI). the AI community keeps itself in denial over this historical reality throughout the 60 year history of this hype.
I am so gosh-darned tired of the old age stereotype and being pigeon-holed because of bring over 50. I just turned 70 and I am still teaching cybersecurity and powershell at a university. The West is shooting itself in the foot by looking down at its aging populace and valuing youth. Right now there are so many positions needing to be filled and they're not being filled because of age snobbery.
Then they have the colossal gall and nerve to cry the poor mouth because there are no workers. Pul-eeeeeze!!!
Very insightful especially in an era of global skill set shortages. Honestly HR and hiring managers are part of the problem.
Super interesting! In the UK we have issues with an increasing number of working age adults unable due to work due to ill health — the disability employment gap — which increases with age. AI definitely has scope to be enabling. But will it impact the disability employment gap equally across age groups?? Hard to tell
This is a deeply necessary provocation.
Too much of the current AI narrative is built on implicit techno-optimism — the idea that more automation means more progress, by default. What this piece surfaces, with sharp clarity, is the cost of that assumption: systems that invisibilise experience, dismiss age as inefficiency, and quietly encode a cultural obsession with newness.
As someone building AI tools for strategic transformation, I think about this often. The bias isn’t just in the data — it’s in the design assumptions, in the workflows that centre speed over depth, and in the language we use to describe “legacy knowledge.” We’re not just building tools. We’re shaping how people think about value.
It’s not enough to audit datasets for bias. We need to confront the structural logic we’ve inherited — and often replicated — in the name of innovation.
Thanks for naming the pattern so clearly. This isn’t just about AI. It’s about the stories we decide to code into the future.
AI equaling human reasoning is a technocratic fantasy. AI researchers has been over hyping its results since the 1960s. Lots of useful “micro-AI” applications including predicting 3-d protein folding are useful, good tools. AI is obsessed with duplicating human level competence (general AI). the AI community keeps itself in denial over this historical reality throughout the 60 year history of this hype.