Alexandr Wang, the 28-year-old co-founder of Scale AI who has attained billionaire status in recent years, has incredibly useful advice to give to teens who are looking to make lucrative careers in the tech industry. According to him, they should seize the opportunity to improve on their artificial intelligence skills by taking advantage of the growing number of AI-powered code generating tools and make the most out of them.
He appeared on a recent episode of the “TBPN” podcast and had a lot to say about AI Coding and it’s increasing relevance today. Wang said, “it’s impossible to understate the degree to which I’ve been radicalized by AI coding.”
What does AI coding involve?
AI coding, also popularly and informally called “vibe coding” makes use of artificial intelligence to generate original software code by simply typing out commands and instructions versus traditional coding which would require the programmer to learn a whole new coding language; now they can just tell AI what to do. Apps like Replit and Cursor, which are AI coding apps, allow you to write code or even develop new apps without requiring prior coding expertise.
According to Wang the current innovations in technological advancement can be compared to the revolutionary days of the tech boom spearheaded by the “the Bill Gates’ of the world” who capitalised on the earliest adoption of computers and software.
Wang said, “It’s actually, in some ways, this incredible moment of discontinuity where, if you just happen to spend, like, 10,000 hours playing with the tools and figuring out how to use them better than other people, that’s a huge advantage,” and encouraged young people to take advantage of this early AI age. Wang’s own company, which he co-founded in 2016, was awarded unicorn status recently and valued at $29 billion.
Wang’s advice to youngsters
Wang, with a net worth of $3.2 billion according to a Forbes report, was hired by Meta in June this year to serve as the company’s new chief AI officer. As a trailblazer in the tech industry, he believes that AI’s potential is tremendous and that it would be able to code just as well as the most skilled programmer in the next five years.
While this raises concerns about the field of software programming still holding out as a favourable career choice, with companies increasing AI involvement and phasing out human programmers, Wang believes that teens can use this to their advantage. According to him, they should maximize their skills with the help of AI and follow in the steps of the pioneers of the early tech revolution. ““That moment is happening right now — and if you are, like, 13 years old, you should spend all of your time vibe coding,” he said on the podcast. “That’s how you should live your life.”
