You're surely right that they anticipate it being be a novelty that people share during holiday visits.
But as you can probably tell from the other replies, the idea that older people don't know how to use internet-era technology is a meme that was wearing thin 20 years ago already.
People who haven't had ChatGPT "land" for them yet are likely just people who don't find themselves asking a lot of questions they need a chatbot to answer, regardless of the medium. That probably has some age skew right now, but isn't really about the medium at all.
I’m a few years from 50 and while Google has deteriorated my Google fu and ability to see signals through the noise still serves me well enough and is my comfort zone.
When I dabble with chatgpt it always feels like I’m playing with a toy as I don’t really have a use case I’m taking to it. I’ve used a few websites creators and code generators which have been useful but also I don’t think they saved me much time overall. Web design, graphic design, etc and creative stuff are things I suck creating so it gives me a new power and is easy to iterate on. Otherwise, I’ve not found much actual value from it yet.
If it makes you much more efficient in your job, like it does for professional software devs, many of HN users, then i think you’re more apt to be excited by the tech
But as you can probably tell from the other replies, the idea that older people don't know how to use internet-era technology is a meme that was wearing thin 20 years ago already.
People who haven't had ChatGPT "land" for them yet are likely just people who don't find themselves asking a lot of questions they need a chatbot to answer, regardless of the medium. That probably has some age skew right now, but isn't really about the medium at all.