Pretty shallow analysis. Doesn't account or what sectors the new jobs are occurring or account for the extended length of unemployment many are experiencing or underemployment. If only he had asked chat GPT, it would have provided more context and nuance than a single chart.
I have! Do it everyday as a program coordinator and you have an incredibly pessimistic view. Is it challenging and do many need continued resources? Yes, but I see seniors learn and embrace new technology as they want/need every day. LA has some amazing digital literacy programs, along with free devices.
People enjoy the comfort of consistent food and housing. People also enjoy serving their community. Working helps provide that. So for folks to be willing to sacrifice their security and comfort to get to the horizon of the new day with greater leisure time, it can be scary for many. Especially when you have to make a leap of belief that AI is a magic wand changing your world for the better. Is that supported by the evidence? It's quite the leap in belief and life change. Hesitancy seems appropriate to me.
Drive your learning is great collaboration between AT&T and Digitunity. I'm uncertain if every course is free but I'm really loving their cybersecurity lessons.
http://www.driveyourlearning.org/
I manage a Digital Literacy Program for seniors. This is a great idea. But for example, most seniors I work with are total beginners. Simply getting to signing up for an udemy course and figuring out player controls on this course are pretty big obstacles.
The long running "Easy Tablet Help for Seniors" is much simpler and free.
I don't know if it's "Victim Blaming"...I teach Digital Literacy courses for seniors new to technology. While I do set them up with Firefox and Ublock, we generally have them use Gmail as they are all Android Devices. Google sends a confirmation email to walk each one of them through their security settings. Of course most users just ignore this email (like I used to have students do) but now we go through it and uncheck this setting in all my courses, and unpersonalize ads as well. Feel like the most basic user who has even the tiniest concern of data privacy should know how to look at their Google Account settings. These are 80 year olds who don't even know what a "click" is but they know to be skeptical of using Google.
That's why reading before commenting is preferred...there's even a synopsis outlying what the report is though at the link and the second page of the report outlines it as well. So even a cursory glance before commenting would have worked here...
It's confusing because in the beginning of the article it brings up another case where there was a database that was deleted.
In this new case the company is claiming it's only using facial recognition to "activate the purchase interface". There is no data stored.
Seems a way over engineered way to activate the display and is pretty much in place for future use. But in this case there's been no secret database revealed.
The program had/has many ISP participants, my small local fiber company participates ATT and Comcast just streamlined the application for their customers with applications on their sites, otherwise you apply with the government's ACP site which takes about an extra month longer to be approved. If approved it provides a $30 month credit to the ISP.
There's a huge need for subsidizing the internet for low income elderly/rural folks though. That's the intent. I work in digital equity and inclusion so tons of my learners/clients utilized the ACP. These are not middle class folks utilizing a loophole. I'm skeptical of these loophole claims as I know many who were denied for being ever so slightly over the poverty level.
So sure, on one hand giving more dollars to Comcast seems terrible, but that's like not wanting a school lunch free program because it's going to benefit Sysco or Aramark. There is a real need for helping low income access the internet.
Send all unknown numbers (not in contact list) direct to voicemail...easy peasy. 99% spam calls don't leave voicemail and visual voicemail lets me delete and block quick. Very minimal intrusion into my device and time.
Couldn't imagine taking the steps in this post to try and block a number that's probably already been replaced with a new one by the time it takes for anything to be done.