The world is changing rapidly. Artificial Intelligence is becoming deeply embedded in our daily lives. Strangely, rather than pushing me toward constant motion, this wave of transformation has helped me slow down. It’s made me more present, more attuned to the small, essential joys: spending time with my family, sharing a quiet morning with my cats, or revisiting a favorite song on my guitar.
Some things are undeniably faster now. But not everything, at least not yet. And maybe not ever. This tension between acceleration and presence has made me more deliberate about how I live. I train at the gym not just for today, but to preserve strength and mobility as I age. I run, not only for fitness, but to meditate.
I’ve started to think differently about my kids’ paths, too. I’m not rushing my son into a corporate job. Maybe he can try building something first and see where it goes. My daughter is preparing for college, but I encourage her to leave space for exploration. Check fewer boxes. Spend more time discovering what lights her up. This doesn’t mean I don’t support their ambition. On the contrary, I love watching them work hard and enjoy the journey.
As for the future? I don’t know what’s coming as AI continues to evolve. Today, we use it to augment our work. It helps us write better documentation, maintain legacy codebases, and prototype systems. We’re experimenting with multi-agent setups where one agent drafts a design document, while another implements code. It’s like emulating a team of junior engineers.
But make no mistake, we’re still hiring junior engineers. The goal is to accelerate their learning, to help them develop the kind of intuition that takes years to build. Intuition that comes from designing, debugging, maintaining systems and collaborating with other humans.
Right now, AI is a tool. But will that always be true?
I suspect not. Someday, AI may surpass even our most talented engineers. At that point, the narrative of AI as “just a tool” might no longer hold. A new world will open up. We don’t yet know what it will look like.
Until then, I’ll keep strumming that old song. I’ll lift the weights, run the trail, and sit quietly with the cats. Because even as we race toward the future, being present is what keeps us grounded.