Do you need technical skills to use AI?

No.

That’s the short answer. But let me give you the longer one, because it’s more useful.

What modern AI tools actually require

The AI tools that matter right now — ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity — all work in plain English.

You type what you want. They respond.

There is no code to write. No software to install (for most of them). No technical knowledge required to get started. If you can write an email, you can use these tools.

The skill isn’t technical. The skill is knowing what to ask and how to ask it.

What actually helps

Experience helps. Not technical experience — professional experience.

The people who get the most out of AI tools are not the youngest people in the room. They’re the most precise thinkers. The ones who can articulate what they want clearly.

Twenty-five years of professional experience teaches you to communicate clearly, think in structured ways, and know what a good output looks like. That’s exactly what makes you good at using AI.

What people actually struggle with

The barrier I see most often isn’t technical. It’s two things.

First: not knowing where to start. The tools have proliferated quickly and there’s a lot of noise about which one to use and how.

Second: a quiet worry about looking foolish. About spending twenty minutes on something and getting nowhere. About confirming some fear that this is all for younger people.

Neither of those is a technical problem. And both of them are solvable.

What That Clicked does

That Clicked is an AI training course for professionals over 50. It starts with Microsoft Copilot — the AI already inside your Outlook and Teams — because that removes the ‘where do I start’ problem entirely.

The first two lessons are free. No account needed. No payment details. Just open the lesson and start.

If twenty minutes of that feel useful, the rest is there when you’re ready.

— Anna