For women curious about artificial intelligence but unsure where it fits in daily life, the Aged Intelligence Society starts with a concrete question: What problem is taking up your time? Cofounders Shoshana Berger and Nina Willdorf host small dinner gatherings where attendees bring laptops and a personal “midlife quandary” to work through with AI tools.
The idea is to make AI less abstract. Rather than asking guests to become experts or cheerleaders, the events offer a place to experiment, learn how to ask better questions, and see where the technology might help with work or family responsibilities.
A practical entry point into AI
Berger and Willdorf trace the idea to a birthday party where they were talking about Claude. They noticed that other women around them were not part of the conversation. Berger wondered whether those women might benefit from the same kind of tool testing the two former magazine editors were doing.
Neither founder presented herself as an AI expert. Berger said their approach drew on habits from reporting: try the tools, examine what they return, and keep refining the questions. They felt women needed to be fluent in a technology that was already becoming part of working life.
Willdorf says their position is not an uncritical endorsement of AI. They believe participation matters, while making room for concern about the technology. At the dinners, a so-called ideological parking lot keeps broad debates about AI’s harms from taking over the practical work of testing tools and reducing administrative tasks.
Guests bring problems, not prerequisites
Each attendee brings a laptop and a challenge from her own life. The group sets aside 15 minutes for “library time,” when everyone works on that problem. Berger and Willdorf move around the room offering suggestions: try a different tool, adjust a prompt, or iterate when the response misses the mark.
The process is not limited to asking AI to write something. Willdorf describes guests who are wary of handing over their writing, and says the founders can point them toward other uses. The goal is to help people find tasks where the tools may be useful on their own terms.
Small groups and varied backgrounds are part of the format. Willdorf says the events work best with between eight and 12 attendees, with people from fields such as nonprofit work, design, philanthropy, and business, as well as people caring for children at home. That mix lets participants encounter problems beyond their own workplace or household.
Reducing the load of work and care
Berger connects the society’s focus to the pressures of midlife, when people may be supporting aging parents while helping children prepare to leave home. She describes the cognitive and emotional labor as heavy, and sees AI as a possible assistant for some of the administrative work.
One attendee had a mother with an Alzheimer’s diagnosis and wanted to understand whether an insurance plan covered long-term care. The insurer had sent a 300-page packet. The attendee put it into an AI tool, which said her mother appeared to qualify and offered to draft a letter to the insurance company. The example shows how AI might help someone make a dense document easier to navigate, though the story does not establish that every AI answer will be correct.
Berger also described using Claude to review a consulting proposal after she had set a fee she thought was too low. The tool advised her to start by doubling her rate. She did so, and the client accepted without hesitation. In her view, practical economic value matters: time saved or better decisions at work can change how useful AI feels.
Experience as an advantage
The society focuses on women over 40 because Berger and Willdorf believe accumulated experience can help people use AI critically. They point to discerning taste, the ability to ask sharp questions, and a willingness to keep probing rather than accept a first response.
That view turns familiarity with life’s complications into a potential advantage. AI tools still require judgment about what to ask and whether an answer makes sense. For the founders, learning to use them is less about adopting every new feature and more about practicing with real questions that matter to the person asking.
Interest in the gatherings has grown beyond the founders’ original events. They have been oversubscribed, the second dinner was covered by The New York Times, and their Substack quickly attracted over 1,000 subscribers. Women outside the Bay Area have also started their own Aged Intelligence meetups, suggesting that the appetite for hands-on guidance is not confined to one local group.