(Tokyo) While other retirees travel, play sports or garden, Tomiji Suzuki has taken up computer programming. At 89, he develops applications for seniors, now using the artificial intelligence (AI) tool ChatGPT.
The octogenarian already has 11 free iPhone apps for seniors under his belt. His latest creation: a slideshow of items not to forget when leaving home, from wallets to hearing aids to health insurance cards.
The idea for this app came to him after he forgot his dentures one day while he was about to board a shinkansen, the Japanese high-speed train.
“This is the kind of thing that happens to old people,” he told AFP, laughing. To imagine apps that are useful to them, it is better that they are developed by a senior like him, he believes.
“No matter how hard they try, I don’t think young people understand the needs and expectations of older people.”
ChatGPT, a “super teacher”
Japan is the oldest country in the world, after the Principality of Monaco. Nearly a third of its population is aged 65 and over, and one in ten Japanese people is over 80.
The fall in the birth rate raises fears of a deep economic and social crisis in the country, with an insufficient number of workers to meet the needs of the growing number of retirees.
Mr. Suzuki worked in international trade, but it was after retirement that he became interested in computers. He took programming courses in the early 2010s.
“I like to create things,” he says. “When I realized that I could develop applications myself, and that if I did, Apple would market them around the world, I felt like it was a good idea.”
To help him create his latest app released in April, Mr. Suzuki asked about 800 coding-related questions to the chatbot ChatGPT, which he describes as a “super teacher.”
PHOTO PHILIP FONG, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
His professional experience in exporting Japanese cars, particularly to Southeast Asia, helps him ask the right questions: “In my younger years, we used telegrams to communicate, we had to be careful to send a clear message, in a short sentence.
“Good chemistry” with AI
The most popular app he developed, a bathroom break counter, is downloaded about 30 times a week, without any advertising.
His older brother uses several of his applications, including a voice recognition tool to write emails: “It’s practical because when you get old it becomes painful to type on a keyboard,” judges Kinji Suzuki, 92 years old.
Etsunobu Onuki, 75, manages a hearing aid store in the suburbs of Tokyo and counts this grandpa-developer among his customers.
He uses a mouth muscle strengthening exercise app created by Mr. Suzuki: “I always do them when I’m sitting in the bath,” says Mr. Onuki, also a fan of his client’s latest app which gives him avoid leaving his house key in his store when he lowers the curtain.
Mr. Suzuki is part of a national group of senior programmers who have helped him throughout his apprenticeship.
“There is good chemistry” between seniors and AI, thinks the founder of this group, Katsuhiro Koizumi, 51 years old.
Because AI can not only help them develop apps, but it can also make them easier to use.
Integrating voice command systems is, for example, useful for elderly people who have difficulty holding down a button, or dragging and dropping an icon on a small phone screen, explains Mr. Koizumi.
Becoming an application developer isn’t easy when you’re retired, but “once you get into it, it’s a lot of fun,” says Suzuki.
“If you don’t have anything to do after you retire, don’t hesitate to give it a try. You might rediscover yourself.”