Last year on a walk, my son told me he knows what he wants to do when he grows up. I've never pushed this conversation on him, but he's apparently been thinking about it.
"Tell me," I said.
He listed three options. Work at a tire shop. Work at a restaurant. Or work a customer-facing job at Target.
Not an astronaut. Not a firefighter. Not an artist. A tire shop.
There's nothing wrong with those jobs. But he was 9 at the time, so I'm holding out hope the list gets revised at some point. If not, my retirement plan suddenly gets easier — a few hundred thousand dollars that won’t be needed for college. So there’s that silver lining.
A couple months later, he announced he wants to learn how to code.
“Why,” I asked?
“Because I want to create my own video game.”
"So you want to be a video game developer?" I asked. "What happened to Big O' Tires?"
“Both,” he said. “Both.”
Time to revisit the retirement plan.
Then, last week, he showed me something he'd built. A lobby, a timer, a task selector, and a storefront he'd designed inside Roblox Studio. The screens looked real. The layout made sense. He'd thought carefully about how a player would move through the space.
“How did you build this?” I asked
“AI,” he shrugged.
—----
A few months ago he believed learning to code was the first step. That was the prerequisite. That was the gate he had to pass before he could build things he imagined.
He has now discovered the gate was gone.
Not open. Gone.
Every generation has been told there are prerequisites. “Learn this first.” “Get this degree.” “Gain this experience.” “Earn this certification.” Then, and only then you can try. Then you can build.
These gates were real. But they were also the reason most people never started. The distance between I have an idea and I can try was too far.
AI has collapsed that distance. Not quite to zero, but close enough to feel magical.
My son didn’t fire up Claude and get a finished game. He typed what he wanted, looked at what came back, adjusted it, tried again.
No tutorials. No coding classes. No one taught him.
He just started.
—-
I know that feeling. The feeling of building something you were sure you weren’t qualified to build.
I built my own website a few months ago. A full CMS, subscriber engine, newsletter automation, SEO optimization. It took me two weeks. 6 months ago, I didn’t even know what half those words meant. AI didn’t just help me go faster. This would have taken me months of learning or hiring a developer I couldn't afford. It helped me begin. It removed the story I’d told myself about what I needed before I could build something real.
—---
AI is not magic. It doesn’t replace the person holding it. But it gives you permission to dream and to try.
I iterated on the design, feel, palette, and sections of my homepage many times before I got it right. My son rebuilt his screens multiple times. The first version had a lag. The first version was not what he had in his head. The AI didn’t read his mind. It nudged him. That process - the judgement, the taste, the iteration - that’s not AI. That’s him.
The people claiming AI can do everything are wrong. The people dismissing AI as a gimmick are also wrong.
The truth is less dramatic and more useful.
AI removes the excuse not to start.
It doesn’t remove the work.
—--
Most people who are using AI are using it to do their existing jobs slightly faster. Writing quicker emails. Summarizing documents. Generating slides. Automating simple workflows.
That’s fine, but they are missing the point.
This isn’t about automation. It is about access.
This isn’t about AI making knowledge work faster. It is about making building possible for people who were never invited to build. People without engineering degrees. Without capital. Without permission. Kids.
The ones left behind won’t be those who fail to adopt AI at work. It’ll be the ones who haven’t realized the rules have changed. That the prerequisites they spent years accumulating — the degrees, the certifications, the apprenticeships — are no longer the gate. The gate is open. And the people walking through it first are the ones with the fewest assumptions about what's required.
My son thought he needed to learn to code before he could build.
He was wrong.
The gate he was preparing for didn't exist anymore.
—-
What I’m watching isn’t just a technology story. It’s a psychological story.
My son hasn't built anything remarkable yet. A few screens in a Roblox game that he's still figuring out. But a few months ago he thought he couldn’t start. He doesn't think that anymore. He just opens a window, describes what he sees in his head, and starts building. The tool gave him access. He did the rest. He's building belief without knowing it. The kind I spent decades looking for.
Manoj
Creator and Writer
I’ve gathered a lot of stories along the way. Some are about grit, some about surrender, but all of them are honest. I’m sharing them here in case they help you write your own.