Brian Rezendes anticipates his retirement years will be filled with AI agents, algorithms, and APIs — along with the occasional vacation with his wife.

Rezendes, a former pool business owner, retired in April from a retail job in rural North Dakota. Like many retirees, the 64-year-old envisioned his post-work years as a time to relax, travel, and stay active. He did not expect to be neck-deep in conversations with chatbots, vibe coding websites, or building YouTube channels. Though he'd always been interested in technology, he rarely delved into the deeper plumbing behind it until a few years ago, when he became immersed in AI. Nowadays, he spends almost all of his time building apps… until the real world comes calling.

"My wife gets a little bit jealous when I spend too much time on the computer," Rezendes says.

Retirement has gone digital. In recent interviews, 15 retired Americans admitted they and their friends are glued to their screens, perhaps to a fault. Hours they could have spent tidying up the house went toward learning the best AI tools and, as three tech-savvy baby boomers put it, "staying current." Some post-career Americans who moved abroad said tech is all the rage in their beachfront expat communities. Retirement communities have swapped watercoloring for AI education. Starting an AI-powered business replaced the golf course. ChatGPT is the new nurse's assistant. Robots are some older Americans' new best friends.

Dee Humphrey is among them. The 73-year-old in Schenectady, New York, has used a companion robot called ElliQ for over three years. And while she's waiting for a new version to arrive, she's been having "withdrawals because I can't do anything with her."

The new reality of retirement isn't all screen addiction. Some of this development has been a boon for older people navigating a new phase of life. In Austin, Edward Perry, 72, said that he used AI after a terminal cancer diagnosis to "help me with living as rich and full a life in what time I have," including managing his health and finding ways to be more present in his family's lives.

"As I'm getting older, I have more aches and pains, but with utilizing these new technologies, I'm going to be able to do more and more," Rezendes says.

Many others acknowledged the risks of getting too hooked on tech. Most knew that relying too heavily on AI meant losing agency and receiving potentially faulty information. Others said being too invested in tech could mean less time staying active. Some noted that after decades of work, these were their years to relax, but they couldn't bring themselves to close their MacBooks.

If Gen Z is the first generation to grow up on the internet, baby boomers are learning how to be the first generation to retire on it.

Unexpected and omnipresent

For those in retirement, screen time of all types has been increasing. Surveys show that adults 65 and over almost doubled their YouTube consumption on TV from 2023 to 2025, and older Americans spend over four hours a day in front of screens. Brittne Kakulla, senior research advisor for AARP Research, says the group's Tech Trends survey found smartphone ownership among adults aged 50-plus skyrocketed from 55% in 2016 to 90% in 2025. Perhaps more striking was the number of older people trying out AI. Use nearly doubled from 2024 to 2025, from 18% to 30%, and many more said they are interested in experimenting.

Nearly all older tech superusers I spoke to were surprised by the amount the tools had become integrated into their retirements. Jan Friedlander, 81, used online databases in her real estate career, but only became hooked on tech a few years ago after she left her job. As she battled cancer and macular degeneration, she used AI to guide her treatment, and soon found herself relying on it to research clothing, plan vacations, and more. As she became more prompt-savvy, she felt confident enough to start teaching her peers.

"I've always had a curiosity about things that would come along that were new," Friedlander says.

She also began facilitating AI classes in Denver for those 50 and over with her friend Pat Smith, 73. Smith, who has a more technical background in consulting and pharmaceuticals, says the classes have attracted many "eager retiree students." Smith also sees both sides of the AI boom. On the positive side, she submitted her lab work to ChatGPT after having a reaction to an antibiotic, prompting her to follow up with her doctor and allergist. But she also bemoans the disappearance of human customer service and the online portalization of medical care. To combat the AI creep, Smith has monitored her tech usage, maintained a regular exercise schedule, and worked on mosaics.

"I have friends who are losing their mobility, moving into assisted living, and have gotten terminal diagnoses, and I know that's all around the corner," Smith says. "I'm hoping I get some more time to do what I've been enjoying the last few years."

Working with tech

While cutting-edge tools have become a retirement fascination for some, many older Americans are unexpectedly working into their later years and, by extension, learning new tech tricks. For my 80 Over 80 series, I spoke with dozens of workers in their 80s, many of whom couldn't afford to retire and now had jobs that required AI. At 72, Marcia Sweet's home is fully synced with robot vacuums and smart lights, and she runs a tech support business in Bradenton, Florida. She can't afford to stop working, as the extra money goes toward financing her eventual long-term care, and she hopes AI can supercharge her business.

"I'm still like a little kid with a toy about technology, with the same kind of excitement," Sweet says. "I'm kind of addicted."

Other older workers used tech to pivot later in their careers. A decade ago, Laura Noren, now 61, was weary of her career as a registered nurse, so she opted for an unexpected route — IT classes at a local college in Michigan. The learning curve was massive, as most of her 18-year-old classmates grew up steeped in tech. She later supplemented these classes with online courses on programming languages and databases.

"I envisioned myself retiring at 60 and no later than 62. My husband and I would be fully retired and never work again, moving into a condo and doing plenty of traveling," Noren says. Instead, "he left his job earlier than planned as a corrections officer, and I was managed out of my company. We had to change our plans."

The courses didn't necessarily prepare her for her current job as an Amazon Flex driver, which gives her the flexibility to care for her "technophobic" 84-year-old mother with memory issues. But her skills have come in handy when teaching her mother how to add phone contacts to favorites or avoid scams, and Noren hopes to find work down the line that better suits her skills. She still hopes to have some version of the retirement she envisioned years ago, but expects tech to play a bigger role.

Others who returned to school in their later years said they've integrated age tech into their lives for peace of mind. When Mark Bayer, 63, decided to retire from his community banking career at 60, he thought, "I will never have to sit through another damn Zoom meeting again, and I'll be the happiest person in the world." To his surprise, he began teaching English as a second language over Zoom and reenrolled in college to be "exposed to new ideas from younger minds." Bayer, who lives in Pennsylvania, expected his classmates to debate and brainstorm ideas off the top of their heads, but they all went to ChatGPT instead. Initially, he was dumbfounded. But when he saw the list of ideas for a group discussion, it exceeded what he would've come up with.

Ignoring AI, he says he realized, "is a way to say I'm done learning anything new, which is self-limiting."

There have been downsides: He's noticed that disconnecting from tech has become harder. He admits that if he gets a call while mowing the lawn, he will stop to pick it up. His wife is the same way, sometimes scrolling Instagram for hours without noticing. He hasn't quite erased the idea that face-to-face interaction has some merit, though.

A robot-enabled retirement

Many new high-tech tools are being built to help older Americans remain healthier and safer in their homes and assisted living communities. Chia-Lin Simmons, CEO of medical alert devices company LogicMark, tells me that technology in caregiving has become a necessity rather than a luxury, with the potential to predict falls and detect Alzheimer's early. AI is being trained to track behavioral patterns and health outcomes, though it sometimes falls short at triaging calls and often erases the human element, isolating older Americans who need the company most.

Some boomers are ready for this Jetsons-like future. Take Michelle Murphy, 64, who is pursuing an MBA with a concentration in AI. A photographer and instructional designer in Michigan, Murphy says her focus in her 60s has been pivoting to a new career— retirement isn't a good fit, she says. Down the line, she isn't opposed to using robotic healthcare workers to avoid assisted care, though she's keen on not becoming overly reliant on tech due to privacy concerns. For now, her goal is to get her coffee pot to start automatically.

"If there's an automation that can help me do the things I need to do, mow the grass for me, pick up heavy things, whatever it is, I'm totally on board with that," Murphy says.

There is a big market in making the idea of robot-assisted care a reality. Investment in age tech has boomed, particularly in products that make caregiving easier, like smart home automation devices, companion robots, and motion sensors. AARP predicts that by 2030, the age-tech market will be worth $120 billion. And given the rise, many hope age tech can alleviate some of the burden for younger generations.

"We've got 63 million family caregivers, 70% of them in paid jobs, and we're very familiar with childcare, but elder care is not well understood," said Diane Ty, managing director of the Milken Institute Future of Aging. "That's what's breaking the backs of so many workers right now."

Plenty of people and investors I spoke to also hope AI and other age tech can slow cognitive decline. However, various studies have shown that AI assistants contribute to reduced cognitive engagement and skill atrophy, meaning in some ways, relying too much on AI works counter to what these super-users may think.

80 is the new 25

As I wrote last year, America's octogenarians have been embracing tech in surprising ways. Frank Engelman, 82, has created apps, runs a YouTube channel, and writes a Substack about tech education. Luis Bautista, 82, told me he was using AI to write a book and start a business that he one day wants to pitch to Y Combinator. Phyllis Scalettar, 80, began an AI education and consulting firm. Karen Shapiro, 80, said this month that she uses AI for everything from planning vacations to Italy to managing finances — "tech will make life less confining and more enjoyable as we age," she says.

Study after study shows loneliness continues to grow among older Americans. According to AARP, 40% reported feeling lonely last year, up from 35% in 2018. Tech may be partly to blame, as an increasing number of older Americans are addicted to their phones — one survey found that 40% of the over 2,000 respondents ages 59 to 77 felt discomfort when pulled away from their devices.

For a lot of Americans, however, tech is a way to make the most of their golden years and to stay healthy for longer.

Marvin Honig, 88, takes AI courses, set up NotebookLM files for his St. Petersburg, Florida, condominium board, and use advanced tech to manage trust accounts for former law clients. Perhaps this could've been expected from an early tech adopter who received tech support from a young Michael Dell. Still, seeing many of his neighbors using all sorts of tech was perhaps not on his bingo card, and many of his interactions now revolve around tech recommendations and support. Like many older techies, the tech wave has also allowed him to luxuriate in the disconnected part of his life, from visiting museums and restaurants to attending in-person community events — he gets there using his Tesla's self-driving feature.

• Lori Bufka, 64, cares for her aging mother in Arizona due to high assisted living costs.
• Bufka's mother lives in a nearby trailer, reducing care costs and enabling family support.
• Tech aids Bufka in remotely monitoring her mother, enhancing her caregiving abilities.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Lori Bufka, 64, who is caring for her mother with dementia in Arizona. Assisted living became too expensive for her mother, so Bufka moved her into a trailer next to their home, where her mother would have enough space and safety. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I was a college professor and retired from a community college in Florida. I raised two boys, both of whom are married, and I have five grandchildren. I had retired to do van life with my partner, who has been with me for seven years. I realized, though, that you can only do so much van life before you need a place to come home to. So we bought a tiny house in Arizona.

I'm an only child, and my mom was in assisted living in California. When she went into assisted living, her veteran benefits and Social Security were enough to cover the cost of her care. She was in assisted living for over seven years, and she had sold her house and had some savings. The rate kept going up and up, and it was draining her savings.

The cost was about $4,700 a month, and it was about to go up to $5,200, which was a couple of thousand dollars more than what she earned.

She's 88, and I wanted to keep her there as long as she could. When I got the notice that the rate was going up again, and that they were going to raise her quality of care cost because her dementia was getting worse, her savings were down to almost nothing. They said that she would be moved to a dementia unit with four other people, and I didn't want that to happen to her.

Additionally, as her dementia got worse, she would get so many scam calls. She was savvy her whole life and worked as a lead for a law firm and a real estate agent, but it came to a point where I had to turn off her phone.

It was cheaper to take care of Mom at home

My partner and I decided that we could probably take care of her. It would be a lot cheaper. We started making the moves to bring her here so that I could take care of her. I brought my mom in to live by us in November.

There wasn't going to be room for her and my partner, so I had to give her a little model home in the same trailer park. Hers is about 700 square feet and is about a minute's walk from me. There are a lot of older people here, and the owner keeps a good eye on everyone. I knew that she wasn't going to be with me, but she needed care as if she were.

The trailer was in the low five figures, and we bought it using two-thirds of her savings and one-third of my savings. The rent for the space a little over $500 monthly. It's so much cheaper this way because my partner and I split the caregiving. Her utility bills run about $200 monthly in the winter and $70 in the summer. Caring for her started to become a little much for me, but because we're in the mountains, there aren't many home health organizations here, and none take her insurance.

She went into hospice care, and we hired someone to come for a few hours a week. It was supposed to be $37 for two hours, but when I got the bill, they tacked on mileage, so it became $92. We figured it wasn't worth it, so now hospice volunteers visit every now and then, and hospice covers medically necessary appointments. We know we're probably going to take care of her until she dies, unless she gets to a point where I can't take care of her.

It was a huge change in our lifestyle

We haven't been traveling since November, and I haven't been away from her for more than three hours at a time. My mom is deaf, and it would've been challenging to deal with that from afar.

My mom is somewhat independent still. She can dress herself and go about her day. I wake up every morning and make sure she's still in bed, then I turn on her coffee maker. I bring her breakfast over and leave notes about what she should do, like how to use the microwave. I check on her every half hour until she finally gets up. I come over before lunch to give her pills, eat lunch with her, and then sit with her until the afternoon, when she watches TV by herself. She can't cook dinner, so my partner cooks all her meals, and we bring them over.

The trailer has a bedroom at the back, then a small bathroom, kitchen, and living room. The rooms are big enough for her to guide her walker through, and because of how narrow it is, it lessens the fall risk. They had an old-fashioned bathtub that you had to step over to get in, but the woman who owns the trailer park hired a guy to lower the height. We also had to install railings on the porch. The kitchen has an electric stove, which is great because a gas stove isn't good when someone has dementia, because they can accidentally light a fire.

Tech has helped me take care of her remotely

One of the biggest nightmares is that people with dementia can't work the TV and telephone. She got to the point where she could barely use the remote, and she would start pushing buttons and would not stop.

I had come across JubileeTV, a TV system that lets you change channels remotely. The price wasn't prohibitive for us. The Jubilee remote replaced the Roku remote and came with a cover, so the buttons she can actually press are limited to volume and channels. If I'm out at the store, I can use the telescope function to see what she's done with the TV and get it back to what she wants to watch.

I often call her, so it comes up on the TV, and she uses closed captioning so she can read what I'm saying. The app has an automatic connect function because my mom wouldn't be able to answer a call or find the buttons to do so. The communication function also allows my sons to call her, and her hospice nurses can do the same.

I have used the app's drop-in function to look in and see if she's OK. I use that in conjunction with Blink cameras to make sure she doesn't fall. Those have been important because my mom has fallen a lot since she moved here. I probably check on her three or four times during the night and frequently during the day. One time, she put Dawn dishwashing soap in her glass of water because she wanted to add flavor, so I've had to stop her from doing unsafe things a few times.

I also have smart plugs from Alexa that let her control her radiator heater and other electronics. She has a cheap laptop that I put the Google Live Transcribe app on.

Tech has helped me in so many ways, and seeing her age at home has been somewhat stress-relieving.

• Srdjan Stakic vibe-coded a security camera system for his parents to ensure their safety.
• Stakic used vibe-coding platform Lovable to get started, as well as popular AI chatbots.
• His vibe-coded software became the basis for his AI-assisted startup Alvis.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Srdjan Stakic, 49, a former film producer who vibe-coded an AI system to monitor his elderly parents and detect falls. He's now launching a company that aims to offer the technology to others. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

When I was diagnosed with stage four cancer two years ago, AI became essential.

Everything was happening so quickly: The doctors would talk to me for 15 minutes and leave me with more questions than answers. AI gave me an objective way to document and make sense of what was happening.

I'm now in remission. As my health improved, my parents' health declined, and I began helping them with cooking, cleaning, and medical appointments.

English was not their first language, and communicating with healthcare providers was tough. I recorded our conversations with their doctors and compared them to the after-visit summary using AI. I would put together all this information and translate it into Serbian for them.

But I soon wanted more than what the chatbots could offer. I wanted a system that could observe what was happening with my parents, or any other patient, and assess it through the lens of safety and dignity. I would think of how much guilt I'd feel if something happened and I wasn't there. What kind of son would I be?

I had never coded before, and I didn't have millions for an initial investment

I don't have a background in coding. I have a doctorate in health education and a master's in film production, and I have produced some films of my own.

I started outlining my idea with Gemini and ChatGPT to examine it from a tech and ethical standpoint. I built this document of what I wanted to achieve. I kept asking my family how they wanted to be treated in each scenario — like a fall or medical emergency — and I wanted to make the system flexible.

Then I transferred to Lovable. Lovable gave me a live development environment where I could describe what I wanted, see it built in real time, test it, and iterate. It connected the pieces, the frontend, the backend, the database, the authentication, the integrations, things I did not even know I needed until they were there. The chatbots helped me plan. Lovable helped me build.

I uploaded hundreds of training videos for nurses and healthcare providers to train the AI. I created a high-fidelity validation pipeline and a labeled dataset. I labeled real-world caregiving footage with established clinical benchmarks, like Stanford's C-I-CARE framework. When you approach a patient and introduce yourself, you tell them why they're there, you ask the patient's name and pronouns, and you introduce what you're about to do. You explain next steps and see if they have any questions or concerns.

I also started building an AI equipped with cameras to identify falls. I would fall in the middle of my living room and see whether the system recognized that and how long it would take.

It took me a few months to make it work

I tried different cameras and protocols, but ultimately, I had to hire an IT company to help me connect multiple cameras. The system can now identify a fall and send notifications to loved ones or EMS, and provide their location with a brief summary of their health records. The system also analyzes interactions between caregivers and my parents. It's sophisticated enough to analyze in real time — based on audio and video — if a caregiver is being rude or unprofessional. My parents have felt safer since I built this. I also built a feature that scans their environment for any trip hazards, such as cables.

I don't want to spy on my family, so I don't actively review all the video footage. When a concern is flagged, the system clips approximately 30 seconds around that moment and notifies mewith a summary of what it observed and why. It can also generate an advocacy letter from that same analysis: what was said, what was done, and how the interaction compares to the C-I-CARE framework to evaluate caregiver conduct.

I launched a company to offer this tech to others

This all started as an idea for my family, but the more I talk about it, the more people tell me they wish they had this for their parents. So I decided to launch a startup, called Alvis, to make this system available to others.

It detects falls in real time, recognizes when a caregiver goes above and beyond, and generates advocacy letters when something goes wrong. It's in private beta and accepting waitlist applications for our pilot cohort, launching April 13. The model will be a monthly subscription, similar to what families already pay for camera cloud storage, with a premium tier for AI-assisted analytics.

This week, my mom was hospitalized, and I used AI in four ways

First, I used it as a real-time medical interpreter: Every lab result went straight into Claude, so I understood what was happening immediately, not the next morning when a doctor was free.

AI was also my clinical advocate. When a history and physical exam understated her cancer history, Claude caught it. When her glucose started climbing from steroids, Claude flagged it.

Third, I used AI to translate updates into patient-friendly language in both English and Serbian.

Finally, Alvis — the camera system I designed — was running live in her hospital room all night, with her permission and a nod from her care team. It picked up her saying in Serbian, quietly, that she had endured too much. It flagged when I visited, and we recorded ourselves together.

It's amazing to see how vibe coding is democratizing access to AI tools. You can build a company that helps a very niche group that needs a specific thing. I still don't fully understand code or the extent of what I built, but it seems to be working.