The Workers Opting to Retire Instead of Taking on AI
Their careers spanned the personal computing, internet and smartphone waves. But some older workers see AI’s arrival as the cue to exit.
4 min
Luke Michel has already lived through two technology overhauls in his career, first desktop publishing in the 1980s and online publishing later on. But AI? He’s had enough.
So when his employer, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, made an early-retirement offer to some staff last year, the 68-year-old content strategist decided to speed up his exit. Before, he had expected to work a couple more years.
“The time and energy you have to devote to learning a whole new vocabulary and a whole new skill set, it wasn’t worth it,” he said.
It isn’t that he’s shunning artificial intelligence—he is learning Spanish with the help of Anthropic’s Claude. But, at this point, he’s less than eager to endure all the ways the technology promises to upend work.
“I just want to use it for my own purposes and not someone else’s,” he said.
After rising for decades and then hovering around 40% in the 2010s, the share of Americans over 55 years old in the workforce has slipped to 37.2%, the lowest level in more than 20 years.
The financial cushion of rising home equity and stock-market returns is driving some of the decline, economists and retirement advisers say.
But for some older professionals, money is only part of the equation.
They say they don’t want to spend the last years of their career going through the tumult of AI adoption, which has brought new tools, new expectations and a lot of uncertainty.
Many people retire when key elements of their work lives are disrupted at once, said Robert Laura , co-founder of the Retirement Coaches Association and an expert on the psychology of retirement.
“Maybe their autonomy is being challenged or changed, their friends are leaving the workplace, or they disagree with the company’s direction,” he said.
“When two or three of these things show up, that’s when people start to opt out.”
“AI is a big one,” he adds. “It disrupts their autonomy, their professionalism.”
Michel, whose work required overseeing and strategizing on website content, has been here before.
When desktop publishing arrived in the 1980s, he was a graphic designer using triangles and rubber cement.
The internet’s arrival changed everything again. Both developments required new skills, and he was energized by the challenge of learning alongside colleagues and peers.
It felt different this time around. “Your battery doesn’t hold a charge as long as it used to,” he said.
He would rather spend his energy volunteering, making art, going to operas and chairing the Council on Aging in North Andover, Mass., where he lives.
In an AARP survey last summer of 5,000 people 50 and over, 25% of those who planned to retire sooner than expected counted work stress and burnout as factors.
About half of those retired said they had left work at least partly because they had the financial security to do so.
In general, older Americans are less likely than younger counterparts to use AI, research shows.
About 30% of people from ages 30 to 49 said they used ChatGPT on the job, nearly double the share of those 50 and older, according to a 2025 Pew Research Center survey of more than 5,000 adults.
Baby boomers and members of Generation X also experienced the sharpest declines in confidence using AI technology, according to a ManpowerGroup survey of more than 13,900 workers in 19 countries.
“We as employers aren’t doing a good enough job saying (to older workers), we value the skills that you already have, so much so that we want to invest in you to help you do your job better,” says Becky Frankiewicz , ManpowerGroup’s chief strategy officer.
Jennifer Kerns’s misgivings about AI contributed to her departure last month from GitHub, where the 60-year-old worked as a program manager.
Coming from a family of artists, she said, it offends her that AI models train on the creative work of people who aren’t compensated for their intellectual property. And she worries about AI’s effect on people’s critical-thinking skills.
So she was dismayed when GitHub, a Microsoft-owned hosting service for software projects, began investing heavily in AI products and expecting employees to incorporate AI into much of their work. In employee-engagement surveys, the company had begun asking them to rate their AI usage on a scale of 1 to 5.
When it came time to write reports and reviews, colleagues would suggest that she use ChatGPT.
“I’d be like, ‘I have no idea how to use that and I have no interest in using AI to write anything for me,’” she said.
It would have been more prudent to work until she was closer to Medicare eligibility, she said. But by waiting until her children were out of college and some of her stock grants had vested, the math worked.
Her first act as a nonworking person: a solo trip to Scotland, where she took a darning workshop and learned how to repair sweaters.
“The opposite of AI,” she said.
Employers already under pressure to cut workers—such as in the tech industry—may welcome some of these retirements, said Gad Levanon , chief economist at Burning Glass Institute, which studies labor-market data.
“The more people retire, the fewer they have to let go,” he said.
Some of the savviest tech users are also balking at sticking around for the AI upheaval. Terry Grimm, who worked in IT for 40 years, retired from his senior software consultant role at 65 last May.
His firm had just been acquired by a bigger firm, which meant learning and integrating the parent company’s AI and other tech tools into his work.
Until then, Grimm expected he might work a couple more years, though he felt that he probably had enough saved to retire.
“I just got to the point where I was spending 40 hours at work and then 20 hours training and studying,” said Grimm, who has since moved with his wife from the Dallas area to a housing development on a golf course in El Dorado, Ark.
“I’m like, ‘I’ll let the younger guys do this.’”
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From auction floors to TikTok — the professionals who made property education a public good
6 min
Australian property has always been a national obsession, but the way Australians learn about it has changed fundamentally. Where previous generations relied on a real estate agent’s advice and a bank manager’s approval, today’s buyers and investors are walking into the market with suburb-by-suburb data, auction strategy insights and valuation knowledge that would have required a professional consultation five years ago.
The ten creators on this list are the reason why. What distinguishes them from the broader landscape of property content is not their following size but the professional substance behind what they publish. Most have spent years doing the work, valuing, buying, negotiating, financing, before they ever picked up a camera. The audience can feel that difference, even when they cannot articulate it.
Today’s buyers are walking into the market with knowledge that would have required a professional consultation five years ago. These ten creators are the reason why.
1 –Tom Panos: Founder, Real Estate Gym
Tom Panos is the highest-profile real estate trainer in Australia, which is a distinction earned over more than two decades of working directly with agents, auctioneers and principals across the country. The content he publishes, on auction strategy, market psychology, agent mindset and the mechanics of negotiation, is backed by a career that predates social media by years.
What makes his presence exceptional is that he speaks to both sides of the transaction simultaneously. Agents follow him for craft. Buyers and investors follow him for intelligence. It is a rare position, and it explains why his audience has grown consistently through every market condition since he began publishing.
2 – Belinda Botzolis: Certified Practising Valuer; Founder, “The Valuer”
The gap that Belinda Botzolis identified and occupied is one that, in retrospect, seems obvious: professional property valuation, made accessible on social media. With seventeen years of practice as a Certified Practising Valuer, more than 15,000 individual property valuations completed, and over $12 billion in real estate assessed, she brought to social media something most content creators in this space cannot fake, a professional opinion.
The response has been significant. Over 20 million TikTok views for valuation content is not an accident. It reflects an audience that has long wanted access to qualified property analysis and found it, for the first time, without having to pay for a report.
3 – George Markoski: Founder, Positive Property
The credibility order matters in property investment content. George Markoski built a portfolio of more than 100 investment properties and retired at thirty-seven on passive income before he built a social media following. That sequencing, wealth first, content second, is the foundation of why his audience trusts him with decisions that carry six and seven-figure consequences.
His content covers RBA decisions, APRA changes and property cycles with the kind of strategic depth that comes from having navigated them personally. He is not forecasting the market from a position of theory. He is reporting from a position of ownership.
4 – Ravi Sharma: Founder, Search Property
Ravi Sharma‘s differentiator is structural: he runs an actual buyer’s agency. The suburb analyses, growth projections and investment frameworks he publishes on YouTube and social media are not constructed for content, they are the methodology his business uses to advise paying clients on real transactions. With more than 114,000 YouTube subscribers and a Bachelor of Business in Real Estate, his content sits at the intersection of professional advice and public education.
The result is content that reads like genuine analysis rather than commentary, because in most cases it is.
5 – Damien Cooley: Director, Cooley Auctions
Damien Cooley has called more auctions on live television than almost anyone in the country, a five-time premiere auctioneer on The Block, and 2015 Auctioneer of the Year. As Director of Cooley Auctions, his authority comes from decades on the rostrum in front of real buyers and real stakes, not from a studio.
His social presence extends that same on-the-ground credibility online, breaking down auction strategy and market sentiment for an audience that wants to understand the mechanics of a sale, not just the result.
6 – Ella Cas: Buyer’s Agent
As a buyer’s agent operating across Melbourne and its surrounding suburbs, Ella Cas brings professional transaction experience to a TikTok presence that covers market trends, price predictions and first home buyer strategy in the Victorian market. What distinguishes her content from general property commentary is its specificity: she is talking about markets she works in, for outcomes she is paid to deliver.
For Melbourne buyers navigating one of Australia’s most competitive property environments, that local professional knowledge, delivered in an accessible format, is exactly the kind of content that earns genuine audience loyalty.
7 – Gavin Rubinstein: Founder, The Rubinstein Group at Ray White TPG
Gavin Rubinstein built The Rubinstein Group at Ray White TPG into one of Sydney’s highest-performing individual real estate practices, and his Instagram engagement outranks every major franchise account in the country. That distinction matters: he is not a media personality who sells property, he is a top-performing agent whose content reflects live transactions in one of Australia’s most competitive markets.
For buyers and sellers trying to understand how Sydney’s top end actually moves, his day-to-day content is closer to a transaction diary than a highlight reel.
8 – Robbo Roper: Mortgage expert & home buyer connector
Robbo Roper‘s content sits at the junction of property aspiration and mortgage reality, which is precisely where most first home buyers get stuck. As a mortgage expert and home buyer connector, he publishes short-form video that walks Australian buyers through the finance side of property ownership: what to expect from a broker, how to prepare for a loan application, what the common mistakes look like.
His placement in Favikon’s Top 20 Australian real estate influencers for 2025 reflects an audience that is not just watching but acting, the kind of content engagement that distinguishes an education account from an entertainment one.
9 – Michael Biviano: Property developer; business coach & real estate strategist
Michael Biviano built his platform on the strategy side of the business, working as a speaker, business coach and property developer before turning that experience into content for agents and investors navigating the industry. His focus sits less on individual listings and more on the frameworks behind sustainable success in real estate.
That distinction, teaching the business of property rather than just showcasing it, is what places him among the professionals worth following rather than just watching.
10 – Consulting by PK: Investment property educator
The property content space has no shortage of people telling audiences what to buy. What is rarer, and more valuable, is someone teaching them how to decide. Consulting by PK builds investment theses from actual data: top 5 per cent growth property analysis, cashflow modelling, suburb research methodology, the frameworks behind the conclusions rather than just the conclusions themselves.
With more than 60,000 YouTube subscribers, the audience that follows this content is a specific and self-selecting one, investors who want to understand the process, not just receive the output. That is a harder audience to build and a more durable one.
What this list reflects, taken together, is a professionalisation of property content in Australia. The era of anonymous property spruikers making market predictions without credentials or accountability is being displaced, slowly, but measurably, by practitioners who are willing to put their professional reputation behind what they publish. That is good for the industry. It is better for the buyers.
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