Retrospective
An AI workshop for the 60+ generation — notes from ETH
21/03/2026 · 2 min read · by gemeinsam
On 21 March we gave an introductory ChatGPT course for participants aged 60+ at ETH Zürich. Two hours, 22 people, no extra slides. Three observations that feed back into our own work.
On Saturday, 21 March 2026, we ran an introductory course on ChatGPT for the 60+ generation at ETH Zürich, as part of the Informatiktage 2026. Two hours, 22 participants, no prior experience assumed.
The scope was deliberately narrow: ChatGPT for everyday use. Writing help, trip planning, text summarisation, fact-checking, general questions. Nothing programmable, no API keys, no model architecture. The goal: by the end of the two hours, each participant could sketch a first trip plan with an LLM — or clearly articulate why they'd rather not.
Three observations
The barrier is not age, it's permission. In the first few minutes it became clear: participants understood the tool quickly. The quiet question underneath was a different one — whether one is allowed to use a tool whose inner workings one cannot fully oversee. Once we said plainly that we also don't see the model in its entirety but work productively with it anyway, a lot relaxed.
Privacy questions are expected and deserve real answers. What happens with what I type? Does my text become training data? Where are the servers? These were the most frequent questions, and they deserve precise answers — not reassuring platitudes. We showed the relevant settings in the ChatGPT interface (chat history, training opt-out) and explained what that means, concretely, in a Swiss revDSG context.
Hands-on beats everything else. The most productive part wasn't the presentation — it was the stretch in which the two of us walked through the room and worked alongside individual laptops. Short inputs, then independent practice with support. The format was clearly the right one.
What this has to do with building websites
The audience at ETH overlaps with our own website clientele more directly than one might at first assume. Self-employed people in Switzerland who need a website are rarely young developers — they are professionals in their own field who do not want to pick up Next.js on the side. The same principle applies: the tool must be built so the client can use it without suspicion and without technical overhead. A CMS with email login — no admin passwords, no plugin updates, no build errors — is our direct translation of that principle.
The two hours at ETH were a good occasion to test it again.