A university teaches AI to people over 55: digital literacy is the first defense against fraud

By WSPA 7News · October 23, 2026.

The University of South Carolina (USC) held the free workshop "Safe AI for Seniors," aimed at people over 55, in Columbia on Friday. According to WSPA 7News, it is the second time the university has organized the event. The session ran from 9:30 a.m. until nearly 4:00 p.m.

Panels covered AI's role in areas such as cybersecurity and mental health. According to the outlet, speakers warned about AI-generated phone calls that seek to steal personal data or pretend a family member is in trouble and needs money immediately.

Professor Biplav Srivastava, of USC's AI Institute, explained the approach: the goal is not to keep amplifying the problems but to show possible solutions, both local ones and best practices from other countries. The opening was given by Harsh Vardhan, an 11-year-old speaker who became interested in AI after using it on a model rocket project in fourth grade. His analogy: AI is "a tool and a weapon," like a kitchen knife that can be used to chop vegetables or to hurt yourself.

Our take: the story is modest in scale, but it points to something important. Voice-cloning fraud (a technique that imitates a real person's voice from an audio sample) is a short-term risk that is concrete and already here. It hits hardest those who grew up least with the technology. Waiting for regulation or carrier filters to solve it will take time, and in the meantime training is the cheapest and fastest defense.

It is also a good sign that the approach is not merely alarmist. Teaching older people to use AI, and not just to fear it, keeps them from being left behind. In general, the digital divide between generations tends to worsen any technological transition, and the AI transition will be no different.

This is the everyday side of the hard transition we openly advocate: there are real short-term harms, and they must be mitigated with concrete measures. In the long term, the same technology can be an enormous ally for older people, from health to personal independence. To get there, that population needs to trust it with good judgment, and that is built in workshops like this one. A practical rule for any family: when an urgent call asks for money, hang up and verify through another channel.

The available material includes no data on attendance or outcomes of the workshop, so we cannot measure its impact. What does work as a model is the formula: free, local and repeated.