In the early 2000s, I pursued a Master's in Computer Science — Java, AI, DBMS, networks, architecture — subjects that today fill entire four-year programmes. The pace was already daunting. Now, watching my three boys grow up, I wonder whether the world they're inheriting is one the human mind can actually keep pace with.
One Master's Degree. Four Programmes. Two Decades.
When I enrolled, the curriculum felt vast. Looking back, it was a single cross-section of a field that has since fractured into dozens of specialisations. What one person was expected to master in two years now requires years more — and the field continues to expand faster than any institution can update its syllabi.
That experience made me a lifelong learner by necessity. Not by philosophy — by survival. Staying current was not a virtue; it was a job requirement. And the half-life of technical knowledge has only shortened since.
The Hardest Question in My House
I have three boys — fifteen, thirteen, and eleven. They are curious, capable, and growing up inside a technological shift that none of us can fully see the shape of yet. Sooner than I expect, one of them will sit across from me and ask:
Baba, what should I study?
And I do not have a clean answer. That uncertainty is not false modesty — it is the most honest thing I can offer them. The credentials I pursued, the career paths I navigated, the frameworks I mastered: some of them will still matter. Many of them may not exist as recognised disciplines in twenty years.
What worries me most is not that I don't know the answer. It is that the people who claim to know it may be the least equipped to give it — because they are building the future primarily for themselves.
When Salesmen Define the Horizon
Figures like Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, and Sam Altman are shaping the trajectory of this era. I say that with neither reverence nor dismissal — as a statement of fact. They command capital, attention, and narrative at a scale few in history have managed.
But I am concerned by what their incentives produce. These are, at their core, product builders. Their vision of the future is inseparable from their commercial interest in it. When they speak of replacing human labour with machines, they are not purely describing the inevitable — they are advocating for a direction that benefits their position. The products are different from any era before. But the salesmanship is the same.
What is being displaced this time is not a skill set or a process. It is the economic rationale for human participation in large parts of the economy. That is a categorically different kind of disruption — and it deserves more than an optimistic press release.
Three Things I Believe Our Children Will Need
I cannot tell my boys what to study. But I am forming a view about what capacities will matter — regardless of which specific domain they enter.
The Ability to Keep Reinventing
The gap between technological change and human adaptability is widening. The coming generations will not be able to learn a domain once and rely on it for a career. The meta-skill — learning how to learn, how to pivot, how to find solid ground on shifting terrain — may matter more than any specific body of knowledge. Cultivate that capacity above all else.
Critical Thinking & Emotional Intelligence
These are the two domains where machines still struggle most. Not because AI cannot simulate them — it can, convincingly — but because the context, judgment, and relational trust that makes them meaningful is irreducibly human. Teaching children to reason carefully, to disagree productively, to understand people: this is not soft skills. This is competitive differentiation for the next forty years.
New Fields for New Obligations
AI is generating ethical challenges faster than the frameworks to address them: algorithmic bias, privacy erosion, autonomous decision-making, digital sovereignty. These are not edge cases — they are structural features of the systems being built. Entire disciplines need to emerge to govern them. The children who help build those disciplines will not be following the future. They will be defining it.
Maybe I Am Overthinking This
Perhaps. I have said that to myself more than once while writing these paragraphs. Humans have faced moments of technological vertigo before — the industrial revolution, electrification, the internet — and we adapted. The species is more resilient than any single generation's anxiety gives it credit for.
But those transitions were slower. The adaptation had room to breathe. What concerns me about this one is the compression of the cycle — the point at which the gap between what changes and what humans can absorb becomes structural, not temporary. That point may not be here yet. I am genuinely unsure whether it ever arrives. But I would rather ask the question clearly than wait to find out.
So when my boys ask me — and they will — I think my honest answer will be this: I cannot tell you what to study. But I can tell you what to become. Curious. Adaptable. Ethically grounded. Able to understand people. Those things, no model I know of can replace.
The world you will inherit was not designed with you in mind. That means you will have to help redesign it. I believe you can.