75,000 AI-generated songs are being uploaded to streaming platforms every single day. 85% of the streams on those tracks are bots. And the platforms you pay every month are choosing to do nothing about it.

In this episode of Tech 4 Grown-Ups, Michael breaks down a number buried in a Deezer report that he hasn't been able to stop thinking about, and what it reveals about AI, fraud, platform incentives, and something even bigger; whether we have quietly started accepting imitation in places where we used to demand the real thing. This is not just a music story. It is a digital literacy story, a fraud story, and an honesty story, and it affects every person who uses Spotify, Apple Music, or Amazon Music.

In this episode:

• The Deezer report: 44% of all new music uploaded to major platforms is AI-generated, that is 75,000 fake songs every single day

• Why 85% of streams on those AI tracks are fraudulent bots collecting real royalty money from real musicians

• Why Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music have the technology to detect and label AI content — and are choosing not to use it

• Robert Greene's hidden dynamic: what do the platforms actually gain from silence, and what do you lose

• A retired music teacher from the Tech 4 Grown-Ups community who said; "Music was the one place I thought we were still safe"

• Ryan Holiday on the difference between being a student of something and merely consuming it and what that means for how we listen

• What Marcus Aurelius and Seneca have to say about obstacles, authenticity, and the things that cannot be automated

• Four practical things you can do right now; pay attention to who made what you're hearing, support real artists directly, demand better from platforms, and stay informed

📚 Resources & Community:

• Tech 4 Grown-Ups Website: tech4grownups.com⁠
• Join the Tech 4 Grown-Ups Free Community: tech4grownups.com/community⁠
• Take the Free Mini Course: tech4grownups.com/free-course

💬 Does it matter to you whether a human made what you're listening to? Leave a comment.

Everyone is talking about AI. Almost nobody is being honest about it. This episode is the honest version.

In this special episode of Tech for Grown-Ups, I step away from how-to guides and settings walkthroughs to have a real, direct conversation about artificial intelligence, what it actually is, what it genuinely does well for older adults right now, and what the loudest voices promoting it have a very strong financial incentive not to tell you.

From Helen, a community member who used AI to become the most informed patient her doctor had ever seen, to Oracle's mass layoff of 20,000–30,000 experienced professionals who received termination notices at 6 a.m. by email, this episode covers the full picture. The good, the bad, and the part that should make you ask some very uncomfortable questions about who benefits from you believing your experience is obsolete.

In this episode:

• What AI actually is, a pattern-matching tool, not a thinking machine, and what it genuinely cannot do
• Real benefits for older adults right now: AI-powered hearing aids, fall detection, medical research tools, and real-time translation for families across language barriers
• The Oracle story: 20,000–30,000 experienced workers let go, and why "AI made them unnecessary" is not the whole truth
• The pattern that never changes: restructuring in the 90s, outsourcing in the 2000s, digital transformation in the 2010s, and AI in 2026
• Why the narrative that your experience is now worthless serves a very specific group of people, and it is not you
• What the Stoics; Seneca and Marcus Aurelius specifically, have to say about technologies that arrive dressed as progress
• Four practical things to do right now: use AI genuinely, make your irreplaceable value visible, ask who benefits, and stay in the conversation

📚 Resources & Community:

• Tech 4 Grown-Ups Website: tech4grownups.com⁠
• Join the Tech 4 Grown-Ups Community:tech4grownups.com/community⁠
• Free Mini Course: tech4grownups.com/free-course

💬 Have a thought, question, or experience with AI you'd like to share?

https://www.tech4grownups.com/post/ai-and-older-adults-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-truth

Have you ever scrolled through Facebook and put your phone down feeling worse than when you picked it up? There is a name for what is happening to you, and it is being done on purpose.

In Episode 4 of The Mind and the Machine, I break down the comparison trap, the scientifically documented psychological mechanism that Facebook and platforms like it deliberately exploit to keep you scrolling. This episode goes deeper than most, connecting platform design, brain chemistry, and the unique emotional vulnerability that comes with being in your 60s and 70s, and ends with five specific, research-backed things you can do right now.

In this episode:

• Why what you see on Facebook is not real life, it is everyone's highlight reel, curated by an algorithm designed to trigger emotion

• What "upward social comparison" is, why it gets more painful as we age, and why Facebook has studied it extensively and chosen not to fix it

• The stress hormone cortisol, what repeated comparison moments actually do to your body over time, including sleep, blood pressure, and immune function

• Identity reconstruction, the documented psychological process many adults over 60 go through, and why Facebook makes it harder

• "Temporal self-appraisal", the specific kind of comparison that whispers is it too late for me? and why the platform feeds it relentlessly

• Meet Margaret; a story about passive scrolling, invisibility, and why millions of people feel exactly the same way but never say it out loud

• Five practical actions you can take today: cognitive reappraisal, shifting from passive to active use, auditing your feed, setting time limits, and remembering what Facebook cannot show you

📚 Resources & Community:

• Tech 4 Grown-Ups Website: tech4grownups.com

• Join the free Tech 4 Grown-Ups Community: tech4grownups.com/community

• Free Mini Course: tech4grownups.com/free-course

🎧 Watch the video version of this episode on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/nPv584pHe0w

📩 Questions or topic suggestions: contact@tech4grownups.com

Next week on The Mind and the Machine: Tech anxiety: why feeling embarrassed about not keeping up is not your fault, and the proof that it never was.