MAY PEN, Clarendon — Retired educator Winnie Anderson-Brown has urged seniors to embrace artificial intelligence and the Internet as she believes they could benefit from the use of chatbots and other available tech tools.

Anderson-Brown made the call during the monthly Coffee and Conversation forum held for senior citizens at Clarendon Parish Library last Tuesday. The gathering took on added significance as September was celebrated as Senior Citizens Month, under the theme ‘Healthy, Active, Productive Ageing’.

Anderson-Brown, who is also a wellness facilitator and laughter yoga instructor, told the more than 60 attendees that they have to keep pace with the times.

“One of the ways of making sure that seniors keep their brains intact is to learn new things. These are exciting times because everybody who has access to WhatsApp has a chatbot at your fingertips, so it is important to understand how to use that. And the best part of it is that the chatbot — Meta’s chatbot or any one of them — can tell you about themselves and can tell you what it can do. So, you ask the questions and you get the answers,” she explained, adding that the chatbot can be anyone a user wants it to be, of any age, and able to speak almost any language desired.

“If you’re not current, you are out of it and you lose your authority and your independence… This is the best time to learn because we all have a personal assistant in a chatbot,” noted Anderson-Brown who describes herself as ageless.

She suggested to her audience that they begin with the Meta chatbot on WhatsApp and Facebook.

“That’s right at your fingertips; you don’t have to search. You start there, but make sure you know ChatGPT — that was the first one that was launched. Then after, you can move from there; you can go to the other chatbots. There are so many others… and you can create your own as well,” she encouraged.

Anderson-Brown praised the efforts of Jamaica Library Service for helping senior citizens with their digital literacy, and said she is willing to help educate all who wish to learn.

Director of corporate communications and marketing at Jamaica Library Service, Royane Green said the aim of Coffee and Conversations is to give seniors the skills needed for everyday life.

“It’s all about empowering them with information, access to information, and the network connection opportunities. We actually launched in May of this year, and since the launch the support has been quite good. The seniors are very enthusiastic; we have already formed a WhatsApp group for them. If you want to send out any information, you can simply send it over to the group and they will respond,” he explained.

Acting senior librarian at Clarendon Parish Library, Karen Henry-Chambers added that the monthly meetings provide an opportunity for participants “to form a more close relationship with their local library”.

She noted that there are other activities available for seniors at the meetings as well.

“They have a lot of presentations from other agencies, like today we have the Ministry of Health and Wellness, labour and social security, [and] HEART/NSTA Trust has joined us today. It’s a similar template that has been replicated across the parish libraries. We are into the whole matter of lifelong learning,” Green highlighted.

Ivy Forbes from Lionel Town Senior Citizens Club, who benefited from a chair massage courtesy of the HEART/NSTA Trust, said she was happy for to receive the service.

“I wanted to do it [massage] for my birthday. I didn’t get the chance to do it for my birthday so I am happy to have the experience now. I feel so good. Wonderful experience. I would recommend it to other senior citizens; we all need this. My body needed it and I got it,” she said.