Introduction
Anja Pohl almost answered a fraudulent email because the salutation sounded familiar and the request seemed harmless. She had spent four decades teaching others to read carefully. That made the near-miss sting more, not less.
Anja lives in Graz and now runs AI courses for older people. She brings along laminated cards, a stubbornly analogue notebook and the patience of someone who knows that a bad learning tempo can be mistaken for a lack of ability.
Story of the Path into AI
The email did not make Anja afraid of the internet. It made her angry at the quiet shame that keeps many older people from asking for help. She wanted to understand how AI writes, how scams imitate tone and how one can test a text without feeling foolish.
At the beginning she felt slow. Younger trainers moved through examples from start-ups, coding projects and social media. Anja needed cases from pensions, travel plans, medical appointments and family messages. So she built her own examples. She compared answers from different systems, collected typical mistakes and designed exercises in which participants first let AI explain a suspicious message and then mark the warning signs themselves.
Her first module was called “AI without panic.” It nearly failed because she had packed too much into one afternoon. The group needed more time to type, to laugh at odd answers, to repeat the same step without apology. Anja cut the theory and kept the practice.
Current Work
Today Anja teaches in a neighbourhood centre and advises local education providers on age-appropriate AI didactics. In one exercise, participants examine a fake parcel notification. The model helps structure the warning signs, but the final judgement is made together at the table.
Several people tell her they now ask for help earlier instead of forwarding suspicious messages out of embarrassment. Anja measures success in such moments. She refuses grand promises: AI does not make older users safe by itself. It becomes useful when it is taught slowly enough for confidence to return.
Personal Advice
“Age is not the obstacle; sometimes the course design is,” Anja says. Her advice is simple: ask for a pace that lets you repeat steps. A tool that makes you feel stupid has already been badly introduced.
Key Facts
Age and place: 69, Graz.
Background: retirement, teaching, protection against scams.
Entry into AI: course module on AI, travel planning and fraud warnings.
Focus today: AI literacy for older adults.
Typical tools: language models, safety exercises, learning cards.
Werkstattnotiz
Anja’s folder contains three versions of the same exercise, each slower than the last. The fastest one looks best on paper and works worst in the room. She is still testing where explanation ends and over-explanation begins. Her pencil note in the margin says: “Leave space for embarrassment to fade.”