The 60-year-old coders conquering AI to stay in the workforce

“I am literally the youngest boomer,” says Stuart Morris, 63, who grew up in Wanstead, east London, and left education aged 16 in 1979. “I was part of the last year not to be taught any computer skills in school. It wasn’t a big thing in the world back then – everybody knew it was coming, but it was still niche.”

Fast forward 40-odd years though, and the world looks very different for Stuart and his cohort. They’re seasoned veterans when it comes to digital revolutions, having lived and worked through the foundation of the world wide web, the dot-com bubble and crash, and the rise of social media and smart phones.

Now they face perhaps the most disruptive shift of them all – generative artificial intelligence. From politics and science to the arts, its impact is already rippling through society. Life is changing again – and with it, the workforce – raising a pressing question: who will adapt, and who will be left behind?

For those nearing the twilight of their careers, the prospect can feel daunting. AI can certainly appear a young person’s game. Silicon Valley is throwing eye-watering sums at 20-something whizz-kid engineers, while teenage prodigies are securing multimillion-pound funding rounds for their AI start-ups.

Even ordinary job adverts increasingly assume a level of digital fluency that skews towards the young. A survey last year found just one in three hiring managers across the UK and Europe would consider candidates over the age of 55 for roles that regularly use AI tools.

Yet not everyone is accepting their fate and quietly slipping off into early retirement – not least Morris.

Despite his lack of early computer education, he carved out a career as an IT contractor – and for the most part enjoyed a steady stream of lucrative work. “They were easy to find, I’d trip over my next job.” But, as he got older, he noticed the opportunities started to dry up.

“Too senior, too experienced”, he began to hear, and that was only from those who bothered to get back to him. Code words for blatant ageism, he says – “The last great taboo.” Eventually he found himself unemployed for two years, desperately firing off dozens of job applications as his savings dwindled.

Yet, earlier this year, Morris, a smart and proud man, refused to accept that AI belonged to a younger generation, and enrolled on tech consultancy FDM Group’s “Returners Programme”. The course focused on retraining and equipping older workers with the latest AI skills to get them back into the job market.

Over 200 mature students have taken the course over the past three years. The intensive syllabus first teaches AI fundamentals and how to use it responsibly. This includes “prompt engineering” – essentially learning how to ask chatbots the right questions. Because the quality of an AI’s answer depends heavily on how a request is framed, candidates are coached on how to steer the model correctly to give useful and accurate responses.

They then move on to hands-on training, building their own AI prototypes using tools such as ChatGPT, DALL-E and Copilot. This involves learning how large language models – the technology that enables AI to sound like a real person – can be configured to perform specific tasks. Teams then spend time developing and working out how to apply these in simulated corporate environments.

FDM has a network of over 150 experts running both the seminars and one-on-one coaching. Malek Labbane, 53, says of her eight-week course in 2023: “It was really intense training.” The former IT consultant had taken a 12-year career break to bring up her two daughters – and the thought of returning to the corporate world had filled her with “imposter syndrome”. “I used to belong to this world, but after all this time, I just wondered – am I still relevant?”

“I needed to get back up to speed with an AI-driven workplace. The training gives you that confidence boost – rewiring your brain so you feel like you still have something to offer.” Within a year, she began work on the Marks & Spencer digital team as a product manager.

After completing the course, participants join FDM as consultants and are deployed across its roster of clients, including tech giant Microsoft and cloud computing behemoth Salesforce. Morris is now working as a programme manager at a top 20 global law firm working on integrating IT platforms during mergers and acquisitions. His knowledge of AI has proved critical – and so has his age.

“AI can do an awful lot of the grunt work, the rapid data processing and pattern recognition, but what experience brings, is knowing what matters and what’s just noise,” he says. “We see it for what it is – another tool that needs stewardship. Too often people just blindly follow the LLM. But with age comes wisdom, and on this, we can make a better judgment call.”

There’s a huge premium for AI talent in the UK right now – and it’s not just for brainbox engineers with PhDs in machine learning, says Dr Fabian Stephany, assistant professor in AI and work at the University of Oxford. “Those deep technical roles only make up a small part of the market. You also need the people who can apply the technology inside organisations.”

Indeed, FDM’s own programme focuses far more on how to apply AI in a business setting than learning how to code it – a task generative AI can already do faster, and in many cases more accurately, than humans. With a lower barrier to entry, even if an employee only learns the basic stuff, Dr Stephany explains, “you’re in demand, you’re in the game”.

His previous research suggests having some form of AI skill can boost your earnings by an average of 23 per cent. And it can also dramatically improve your hiring prospects – particularly older people, according to a forthcoming paper exclusively shared with The Telegraph.

In the study, recruiters were shown two near-identical CVs – essentially giving each candidate a 50:50 chance – and asked which they would invite for an interview. When one also listed AI skills, their chances of being chosen increased by 8 to 15 per cent, depending on the level of training (such as a LinkedIn certification or an Oxford University short course).

Crucially, the study – which showed 24,000 AI-generated CVs to 1,600 recruiters – found that any extra AI training also offset traditional disadvantages, including age. For an office administrator role, older workers were only chosen a third of the time compared to a younger candidate. However, when AI skills were added, it tipped in their favour – increasing their chances to 55 per cent.

For a software developer job, the older worker was even less likely to be interviewed – only chosen around one in four times. But by adding an AI qualification, it levelled the playing field to 50 per cent.

“The findings were pretty tremendous,” says Dr Stephany. “I think there’s good reason to have older workers in AI. You need people who have witnessed these cycles – the computer, the internet, the smartphone – to cut through the hype with healthy scepticism.”

Rod Flavell, FDM Group’s 67-year-old founder and chief executive, certainly agrees. “It’s these silver coders who will point out and challenge if they spot a mistake. This is one of the great differences between those younger, who might be subservient, and those older, who question it more.”

Another “returner” is Rob Riley, who spent three decades at a global bank as a business analyst before being made redundant at the age of 58. On the job hunt again, his age appeared to be a major barrier – so he joined FDM to refresh his CV with AI skills. He now leads the rollout and adoption of Copilot – Microsoft’s AI chatbot built into its Office software – for one of FDM’s large public sector clients. This includes educating 9,000 civil servants on the AI system and advising on cross-government calls.

“We had a phase when everyone coming into tech had to be a bright young graduate,” says Flavell from the company’s glass-fronted London headquarters overlooking the Thames. “But this feels more like an earlier era when you just need to have the right aptitude. University students might have great academic qualifications, but they haven’t worked in business for 20-odd years.”

Yet this confidence is not reflected across the labour market. A survey of 1,500 hiring managers by non-profit Generation – which trains and places adults into careers that would otherwise be inaccessible – found that the preference for younger candidates “intensified” for roles that regularly use AI tools. In the UK and Europe, 86 per cent said they would likely consider under-35s for such a position – but only 33 per cent would do so for candidates over 60s.

And since the pandemic, economic inactivity among people aged between 50 and 64 has risen sharply. Many have left the workforce early and not returned, citing long-term ill health, burnout, or early retirement.

Successive governments have tried to coax them back through a patchwork of initiatives – from promoting “returnerships” to mid-life career “MOTs” – but their success has been limited. And while there are 10 million people aged 50-plus in the UK workforce, fewer than 20 national returner programmes exist – and only a handful of these, like FDM, focus on tech and AI.

For those willing to learn however, there is money to be made – as Morris can attest. “AI offers the breadth, while experienced humans offer the depth,” he says. “The best results come from combining the two, not substituting one for the other. The irony is the people most likely to guide AI safely are often the ones being nudged out of the workforce.”

Click here to explore this article's original source for more.