Question courageously.
Examine evidence carefully.
Conclude cautiously.
Engage respectfully.
Seek solutions collaboratively.
We Walk What We Talk.
Subject: Invitation to Retired Professors Association to join the “Retired Professors + ChatGPT Global Pilot”
Dear President / Colleagues,
We would like to invite your association to participate in a new international initiative: RETIRED PROFESSORS + CHATGPT GLOBAL PILOT: Using AI to accelerate eCollaboration among retired professors’ associations worldwide.
The idea emerged from a simple principle: “We Walk What We Talk.”
If we believe that information technology and artificial intelligence can strengthen collaboration, then we should use these tools ourselves to demonstrate what is possible.
Retired professors represent an enormous reservoir of knowledge, experience, professional contacts and social capital. Retirement from employment does not necessarily mean retirement from academic and professional life. Modern digital and AI tools can help us remain connected, collaborate internationally and continue contributing to universities and society.
We therefore propose a practical international pilot in which participating retired professors’ associations explore how ChatGPT and other AI tools can help us:
- communicate and collaborate across countries and languages;
- share knowledge, experience and good practices;
- jointly research issues affecting retired professors;
- prepare articles, reports, presentations and webinars;
- develop new international projects;
- strengthen connections between retired professors and universities; and
- demonstrate the continuing value of retired professors in an increasingly digital and AI-enabled society.
What would participation involve?
We envisage a small group of interested associations beginning with a pilot.
Each participating association could nominate several interested professors who would experiment with ChatGPT in their real collaborative work. Participants would share their experiences, successful prompts, challenges and results.
The objective would not be to become AI experts. The objective would be to discover, together, what AI can practically do for professionally active retired professors and their associations.
At the conclusion of the pilot, we could jointly prepare a short report: “Retired Professors + ChatGPT: What We Learned from International eCollaboration.” Such a report could become a useful starting point for a much broader worldwide initiative.
An opportunity for something new
We believe this initiative could demonstrate an important principle: The knowledge and experience of retired professors can become even more valuable when connected through digital technologies and artificial intelligence.
For us, collaborating with ChatGPT in such an initiative would be an honor. We would be especially interested in exploring whether the initiative could eventually develop a dialogue or cooperation with OpenAI/ChatGPT concerning the responsible and beneficial use of AI by retired academics. We warmly invite your association to join us in exploring this possibility.
Would your association be interested in becoming a founding participant in the “Retired Professors + ChatGPT Global Pilot”?
We would be delighted to hear your thoughts and, if there is sufficient interest, organize an initial online meeting of representatives of participating associations. Applications from associations of retired professors to participate in the pilot are being collected by Joze.Gricar@UM.si, Secretary, Professors Emeriti Network.
With kind regards,
RETIRED PROFESSORS + CHATGPT GLOBAL PILOT: Using AI to accelerate eCollaboration among retired professors’ associations worldwide.
September 7, 2026
Retired Professors and ChatGPT: eCollaboration
Objective
The objective is not to become AI experts. The objective is to discover together what artificial intelligence can practically do for professionally active retired professors and their associations. The initiative is based on a simple principle:Learn by doing. Share what works. Learn from one another.
Each participating association of retired professors—a partner—would invite several interested professors to experiment with ChatGPT in their real academic, professional, and collaborative work. Participants would share their experiences, useful prompts, challenges, results, and lessons learned.Participation by active professors is also encouraged. A partner may also be an informal group of retired professors interested in the initiative, provided that the group has a website or another suitable online presence that enables eCollaboration.
Each partner would publish and regularly update basic information about its participating group on its website, including the names, titles, professional fields, and appropriate contact information of participants. A designated contact person should be identified.
Links to participating partners and their contact persons will be posted on the Retired Professors + ChatGPT Global Pilot website.
The purpose is to create a simple international environment in which retired professors can experiment, exchange experience, learn from one another, and develop new forms of eCollaboration with the assistance of ChatGPT.
Learning from international experience
Periodically, ChatGPT could assist in preparing a short report based on information and experiences published on the partners’ websites:
“Retired Professors + ChatGPT: What We Learned from International eCollaboration.”
Such reports could identify useful practices, common challenges, successful applications, and new opportunities for collaboration. Over time, they could provide a useful foundation for a much broader worldwide initiative.
A “ChatGPT Companion for Retired Professors” approach
A practical principle is:
Bring your own problem, document, idea, or project—and work on it together with ChatGPT.
There is no need to begin by learning complicated AI terminology or “prompt engineering.” The best starting point is a real task that matters to the professor.
Ten practical ways ChatGPT can assist
- Personal AI tutor.
A professor can simply say: “I am new to ChatGPT. Teach me one useful thing at a time, using examples from my academic work.” ChatGPT can explain concepts step by step and adapt explanations to the user’s knowledge and needs. - Writing and language assistant.
Retired professors can use ChatGPT to draft and improve articles, correspondence, conference proposals, association announcements, biographies, speeches, and website texts, as well as to assist with translation between languages. This can be particularly valuable for maintaining international academic contacts. - Research assistant.
ChatGPT can help find current information, identify sources, explain unfamiliar developments, compare approaches, formulate research questions, and develop literature-search strategies. An important working principle should always be: ask for sources and verify important information. - Document companion.
A professor can upload a paper, report, PDF, spreadsheet, or presentation and ask ordinary questions such as: “Summarize this,” “What are the main arguments?”, “Compare these two documents,” or “What could be improved?” This makes sophisticated document analysis accessible through ordinary conversation. - Voice companion.
Professors who prefer speaking to typing can communicate with ChatGPT by voice. This can make AI considerably easier to use and can lower the initial barrier for colleagues who are less comfortable with keyboards, software interfaces, or elaborate prompts. - Digital-skills helper.
A professor can ask: “How do I prepare a Zoom invitation?”, “How should I organize these files?”, or “Please explain this computer message in simple language.” ChatGPT can provide step-by-step guidance at a pace appropriate to the user. - Project partner.
A professor working on a book, historical investigation, research topic, association initiative, or other longer-term activity can use a ChatGPT Project to keep related conversations, documents, and instructions together. This provides continuity instead of requiring the user to start from the beginning each time. - Association assistant.
Associations of retired professors can use ChatGPT to help prepare meeting agendas, invitations, minutes, newsletters, surveys, project proposals, website materials, and international correspondence. In this way, AI becomes not only an individual tool but also an instrument of eCollaboration. - Connector between specialists.
This may be especially valuable for retired academics. A historian, economist, physician, engineer, information-systems professor, or specialist from another discipline can contribute professional knowledge and experience. ChatGPT can help organize and compare these perspectives, identify connections between them, and support interdisciplinary problem solving. - Continuity assistant.
Retired professors often possess decades of accumulated knowledge, documents, professional contacts, and experience. ChatGPT can help them organize this material, continue unfinished work, develop new projects, and make their accumulated knowledge more accessible to colleagues and younger generations.
Begin with five ordinary sentences
There is no need to learn complicated commands. A new user can begin with five simple sentences:
ChatGPT, please help me with this.
Explain it more simply.
Give me an example.
What information do you need from me?
Please check your answer and give me the sources.
The conversation can develop naturally from there.
One professor – one real task – one ChatGPT session
At each Zoom meeting, several retired professors could demonstrate how they used ChatGPT for a genuine task—for example, preparing an article, researching a historical question, analyzing a document, translating correspondence, organizing an international initiative, developing a research idea, or solving a practical digital problem.
Afterwards, participants could share four simple elements:
Problem → Conversation with ChatGPT → Result → Lesson learned
Over time, the Network could build a growing international collection:
Retired Professors + ChatGPT: Best Practice Stories
These stories would demonstrate not what AI might theoretically do, but what retired professors are actually doing with it.
From learning AI to eCollaboration
This approach reflects an important idea emerging from the Zoom meeting of September 16, 2026: The goal is not merely to teach retired professors about artificial intelligence. The goal is to enable them to use AI easily and effectively to remain academically and professionally active, share their accumulated knowledge, and collaborate with colleagues around the world.
In this way, ChatGPT can become more than an individual AI assistant. It can become an enabler of eCollaboration among retired professors, their associations, active professors, universities, and generations.
We learn together. We share what works. We collaborate beyond retirement.
Links to Associations of Retired Professors
To be posted.