To coincide with ASA’s Membership Celebration, and feature people who represent the depth and breadth of what we do, we asked 5 ASA members to answer 5 questions. We’ll run the short profiles across the course of the Celebration.
5 Questions for Ezra Schwartz
Ezra Schwartz is 64 years old, and a UX (user experience) researcher, strategist and designer with nearly 30 years’ experience designing software products with an emphasis on user-participation and input. He is also a certified AI Auditor, and since 2024, has provided guidance to organizations on AI risk mitigation and governance practices for responsible, AI-driven UX, primarily in the AgeTech ecosystem. He joined ASA in 2024 because he wanted to belong and contribute to a community built on the understanding that aging is not a problem to be solved, but a human experience to be honored and supported. Schwartz attended his first On Aging conference in Orlando, and says he was happy to discover that he has found just what he was looking for.
1. What inspired you to work in the aging field?
In the aging field I get to apply the skills and expertise I have accumulated, and to develop new ones in response to the impact of AI on human experience, in an area that is relevant to me personally and professionally. I am an older adult, with caregiving responsibilities for parents and children, who in a few decades—time flies!—will be older adults themselves. Of utmost significance for me is that I can continue to grow and evolve through collaboration with others and designing new solutions to old problems (pun intended).
2. What are you most proud of in your work in aging?
I am most proud of founding Responsible-AgeTech.org and hosting the inaugural Responsible AgeTech ’25 conference on July 10, 2025. My goal was to create a space where older adults, ethicists, technologists, caregivers and policymakers can engage in authentic dialogue about what responsible innovation should be. The conference brought together diverse voices from around the world to discuss responsible use of AI in aging care. Thirty-five panelists from Asia-Pacific, Africa, Europe, North and South America accepted my invitation to participate, and generously contributed their expertise to the discussion. If you ask me a few years from now what I’m most proud of in my work in aging, I hope to have contributed more to our developing field.
3. What have you learned from the people you’ve met through ASA?
Every person I've met through ASA has embodied the intergenerational plurality and diversity of aging. I encountered a commitment to and passion for empathy, inclusion, activism, fairness, innovation and mutual respect. I have found multiple domains of expertise to learn from, many accomplishments to be inspired by, and a genuine desire for collaboration and partnerships.
4. What do you think is most needed in the aging field right now?
We need to slow down and listen deeper. There’s this rush to innovate, to deploy AI solutions, to “solve” aging—to analyze, quantify, optimize, and automate. But we are missing the cultural, emotional and practical contexts that shape how people experience growing older or caring for others. We need more authentic collaboration where older adults, caregivers and care providers are partners in design, not subjects of it. And we need robust conversations about the risks associated with algorithmic bias, reliability, privacy, consent, safety and data security in a field where the stakes—independence, autonomy, dignity and safety—are so high.
5. What’s one question you’d love to ask your peers?
“How do we balance AI with preservation of human agency?” To me, this question cuts to the heart of everything we are grappling with—whether we are discussing AI in healthcare, smart home technologies, social companions, or care coordination systems. It forces us to examine whether our solutions truly serve human thriving or pure commercial interests.
If you’d like to participate in this type of 5-questions profile, please email Alison Biggar at abiggar@asaging.org.