How I’m Preparing My Parents—And Myself—To Be Fluent in AI

Disorienting technological change can arrive in small moments—like standing cashless at a vending machine in China, locked out by an app you don't have, watching the familiar world become foreign and your dignity slip away with your inability to buy water. As Vivian Meng (who previously produced our podcast AI & I) explains, this shift from the internet age's demand for technical literacy to AI's requirement for epistemic fluency means we must know not just how to use tools, but how to question and guide them. She balances clear-eyed concern with practical hope, offering specific ways to bridge the digital divide across generations.—Kate Lee

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The last time I visited China, seven years had passed since my previous trip. I expected some changes, but I thought the basics would still feel familiar.

I was wrong.

With the sun’s rays beating down on us outside Niushoushan Temple in Nanjing and no personally manned shop in sight, I watched my dad’s face turn to dismay trying to buy bottled water from a QR code vending machine, the lone oasis in a desolate concrete field. Trying to visit Nanjing Museum was difficult, as tickets could only be purchased through WeChat, a superapp that bundles a variety of services like chat, transport, and shopping. We didn’t have the Chinese phone number necessary to register for these local services, so we watched rideshare cars fly by, wholly inaccessible without cashless payment. Block after block, we walked to busier streets, waiting at curbs to spot a rare yellow cab.

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It wasn’t just my parents—I struggled too. Despite being part of a generation that’s supposed to be tech-literate (zoomers, unite!), I felt powerless. At the neighborhood fruit shop, with change in my hands, I watched my grandpa give the cashier his phone to scan a digital wallet instead. My parents and I trailed after our relatives, like ghosts wading through a home-shaped mirage that spoke in riddles—QR codes instead of cash, screens instead of signs, silence where help used to be.

That experience has stayed with me. It showed me how fast technology can make the familiar feel foreign, and how quickly you can find yourself shut out, not just from conveniences, but from the basic rhythms of daily life, like cold water on a hot day.

Cashless payments and superapps silently eroded our access to everyday necessities, while at the same time, enabling convenience and access to services for millions (like my grandpa, ordering lunch to his door with WeChat). As it currently stands, AI might be eroding our ability to trust what we see and hear, all while allowing upwards of 700 million people to seamlessly access that on-demand career coach they may not have been able to afford, or build projects that would be much harder to achieve without the technical support AI can offer (as I’m finding, deploying my first technical project with Claude Code).

AI lets us unlock knowledge with much less friction, but hands us a contract in return. In a world where AI is no longer confined to research labs or Silicon Valley, but increasingly seeps into the cozy, familiar corners of our lives, we get to accept the increasing responsibility for exercising our own judgment. On Instagram, I see fully AI-generated people—faces, voices, gestures—delivering deceptively personal stories in ads designed to sway me and my digitally-native peers. Walking past a local music festival, I noticed vendors selling polyester T-shirts with absurd, glitchy animal faces pasted in a repeating pattern, evidently done by an AI artist. As I see AI’s fingerprints popping up in corners of the world outside of tech circles, I’m reminded of how important it is to learn about it. Though these traces may seem trivial, they point to a deeper shift in how we’ll experience the world. The more seamlessly AI blends into our daily lives, the easier it becomes to stop noticing it altogether.

Picture a near future where AI voice technology can convincingly imitate family members. Imagine healthcare guided primarily by AI triage assistants, determining whether your symptoms merit attention. Consider children bonding with AI-powered stuffed animals—available to chat even when adults aren’t around to counter false statements. Just as digital wallets replaced cash, these AI systems could replace human judgment, making invisible decisions that chip away at our trust in the world.

Yet, on the other hand, AI can be an expansive tool that allows us to show up more fully in the world—if we use it well. Whether we use it to learn from our favourite writers by analyzing their stylistic choices, build our first website with it, or use it as a career coach to dream bigger about our trajectory, it’s hard not to see how it can be helpful to expand what’s possible with our lives.

Between the repercussions and advantages of AI, I wonder: How can I make sure my parents aren’t left behind by technology again? How can I make sure I’m not left behind?

Being locked out of technology isn’t just an inconvenience. It’s about dignity, agency, and independence. It’s about the quiet, unseen grief of feeling like the world is moving on without you, and that the ground you once stood firmly on has turned into quicksand.

We've seen this before.

When the internet exploded into everyday life in the 1990s and early 2000s, my parents’ generation had to adapt to a world that suddenly expected email addresses, online forms, and digital literacy. Many did. Some learned more quickly than others, often with the patient help of their children or coworkers. Some never fully caught up, though, instead finding themselves excluded from opportunities that assumed technological competency, like being able to send a cold email or file taxes online.

The difference now is that AI moves even faster, and its work is often invisible—it outputs a seemingly palatable information soup through a complex transformation of its inputs that we can’t precisely trace. Even if you can comfortably prompt ChatGPT, you need to parse its outputs. Unlike traditional web search, which presents multiple sources to compare and weigh against each other, AI gives you a single answer—confident, coherent, and low-friction. That ease is part of what makes it so powerful, but it also makes it easy to stop questioning.

My parents have professional-level English, yet reading through a dense AI-generated response can feel overwhelming, like trying to drink from a firehose. The simple-looking interface expects you to bring not only language and prompting skills, but a whole set of unspoken literacies: how to skim and scan quickly, how to spot what’s boilerplate AI-speak, how to steer the tool with a firm yet flexible hand.

These are things I’ve learned to do almost without thinking: to abandon fluff I don’t need, to zero in on what’s useful, to keep editing my prompt until it clicks. But those instincts were shaped by years of immersion in tech culture. What’s intuitive to me after a learning curve—prompt, skim, revise—can feel murky or discouraging to someone not steeped in the same environment. And that gap isn’t about intelligence. It’s about a kind of digital competence that many people aren’t aware they need to develop.

Where the internet age demanded technical literacy, the AI age demands epistemic fluency. It’s no longer enough to know how to use the tool; we must also learn how to question and guide it. It’s more than knowing where to click—it’s about knowing what to trust.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably already a little ahead of the curve. You’re curious about AI, likely experimenting with it, too. That curiosity is a portal we can help others walk through. We have a chance, and a responsibility, to bridge the gap for those who might otherwise be locked out of the next wave of change. Anyone learning anew can and should be met with patience (that includes ourselves, by the way).

Developing fluency

Building comfort with AI doesn’t require turning anyone into deep learning experts. Instead, we can focus on training the muscles required for AI and epistemic fluency. With my parents, it was helpful to start with small, practical use cases that they could see themselves returning to. At the start, learning how to use AI, or any new technology, can feel just as clunky as learning a new language.

Here are a few ways to begin:

Navigate a complicated subject: I’ve been showing my parents how o3 can help them make sense of municipal bylaws and condo board conversations that they might otherwise get stranded in. These topics are out of my depth, too, and when I get roped in to help them, I’m relieved to explore a tool that gives us footing in a sea of legalese.

Plan a trip together: AI is great for laying the foundations of travel plans. We can, as a family, fact-check AI’s recommendations (Does that restaurant still exist? Do train tickets still cost that much?). I’m also excited to see my parents discover places that are tailored to their interests. For example, from their last trip to Spain, my dad learned he loves Antoni Gaudí’s architectural style. He could ask o3 to dive more into Gaudí’s work, and discover similar architectural styles he might be into in other parts of the world.

Generate or improve a piece of writing: AI can be a thoughtful assistant for formal communication, in the workplace and beyond. This is a great opportunity to hone in on what we love about the way we express things, and what word choices feel most natural and true to us. It also allows us to expand our repertoire for handling unfamiliar or nuanced situations—even when we’re still figuring out how we want to show up in them. In my parents’ case, it’s helped them draft messages to their condo board and communicate assertively. At the same time, they know to cross-reference what’s being generated with the original source (in this case, the municipal bylaw site) to make sure the draft was citing factual information. Because AI can easily create polished sounding content that’s plain wrong, we can remember to maintain some healthy skepticism with its outputs.

Experiment with an AI voice app: This is a really great way to show family members how impressive these tools (Sesame is a popular one) have become at generating human-sounding voices, and how strong they already are at replicating speech patterns. With that awareness, we can then ask: What still sets our voices apart? Maybe it’s an inside joke, the way someone laughs, or the unique quirks of someone’s intonation or phrasing.

Explore creative play: You can take this in any direction you want, like generating fun images together with ChatGPT-4o or image generation experimentation site Google Whisk for your family WhatsApp group chat. It’s a good reminder that AI can be a source of joy and expression, not just efficiency. And when something looks off or feels uncanny, it’s a chance to ask: What details are we tuning into? What is it triggering within us?

Stepping into the future—together

My parents taught me how to live and thrive in the world they knew. Now, it’s my turn to walk alongside them into a world that will look drastically different 20 years from now. All the while, I’m seeing my friends’ children grow up with AI, seeking out ChatGPT Voice Mode or Google Home for endless conversations like they’re a friend. The computer lab classes of my generation taught us how to use word processors and search engines. The digital literacy classes of tomorrow will be preparing children for an era of cheap, easily deployed intelligence—where prompting is a core skill, and having the discernment to know what “good” looks like across mediums (text, voice, visuals) matters more than ever.

AI is a tool we’re all still learning to wield. It’s also one that will keep evolving, requiring ongoing humility, curiosity, and care. Helping each other navigate the AI age isn’t just about teaching skills. It’s about protecting agency and dignity as the tides change. It's about building bridges across generations, so no one we love has to stand alone at the gates of a future they helped create.

Vivian Meng is a producer and operator studying cognitive systems at the University of British Columbia. She previously produced Every’s AI & I podcast. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.

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