At the beginning of the spring session, Cyber Linkage made its debut at San Mateo Adult School. Led by junior Milana Rozkin, the club’s classes took place twice a week every week to teach senior citizens how to use artificial intelligence (AI). Each class was made up of one-on-one sessions between a senior and a high school volunteer. Rozkin said she founded Cyber Linkage to bridge generational gaps and combat the senior loneliness.
“My mission is to make AI more accessible to older generations while connecting the generations,” Rozkin said. “Because right now, in San Mateo, loneliness was officially stated as an epidemic, and a lot of seniors in the county have been facing loneliness, and I feel like a lot of teenagers can also face loneliness. So I wanted to bring them together.”
Rozkin said the time she spent with her grandmother inspired her to make intergenerational relationships more accessible.
“And I wanted to make that more accessible, I wanted everybody to have that type of [intergenerational connection,] because it can be really fun,” Rozkin said.
Jeri McGovern is Coordinator of Active Adult (50+) and Community Education Programs. According to McGovern, as the seniors progressed in the class, they were able to master more aspects of the technology.
“So the more involved they became, the more they learned how to actually master the different functions,” McGovern said. “They became really impressed and engaged and really delighted. And we’re so happy that they did join the class and stayed with it.”
McGovern also noticed strengthening connections between the seniors and the volunteers.
“The other thing I noted was the beautiful exchange between the younger students, the high school students, and the seniors,” McGovern said. “And I took some photographs here, some pictures on my phone, and even in the body language, you could see the younger people leaning in, really listening and paying attention to the stories that the seniors were telling.”
Junior Issa Natour has been a member of Cyber Linkage since the club began. He assisted a senior citizen throughout the program, who he taught to use ChatGPT.
“We as young people use ChatGPT very often, and it helps us with everything that we do in everyday life,” Natour said. “And they’re not fortunate enough to be raised with this tool. So my goal is to help him make his life easier.”
Natour said another one of his goals was to learn from Phil and explore generational differences.
“[My] favorite part would probably be hearing some of Phil’s stories from back in the day without technology, because I would find it so interesting how they would do everything, travel around without like Apple Maps telling them where to go, having paper maps, also contacting people and what they do for fun,” Natour said. “Because nowadays, people play video games for fun, or study on the computers or go to the movies, but back in the day, they didn’t have any of that.”
Tim Donally had been taking classes at the Adult Learning Center, a department under San Mateo Adult Career Education, for five years before taking classes with Cyber Linkage. Donally said that the class taught him useful ways to use AI.
“I was with some fellas that were trying to come up with a song, and they’re looking for something that would rhyme with what was it, ‘child support,’ they couldn’t think of anything, and I said, well, let me ask ChatGPT, because the tutor put the app on my phone, and sure enough, it came up with a dozen pretty good ones,” Donally said.
Donally said he is familiar with the stock market and wanted to use AI to increase his efficiency, for instance, by asking it to provide the lowest price for earnings (PE) ratios. However, when he used AI for the PEG (Price/Earnings-to-Growth) ratio, an important part of finances, for Nasdaq six months ago, the AI was inaccurate.
“So the problem so far I’m gathering is if it doesn’t know something, it’ll make something up,” Donally said.
The senior citizens expressed gratitude for Rozkin’s organization and the volunteers’ time and effort.
“[The] students that we worked with at the San Mateo Adult Ed, I think it was a brilliant program, and I’d like to see those kind of interactions, reciprocal interactions, where the youth can help the seniors and vice versa,” Gayle said.
Rozkin said her goal for the program is to expand Cyber Linkage beyond Burlingame.
“I’m going to start emailing more adult schools and try to figure out how to expand the program so it’s not just Burlingame High School students,” Rozkin said. “I want to make it more Bay Area-wide than just [the] Peninsula.”.
