I have three daughters, Meg, Lily and Hetty.
They are smart. Funny. Kind. Morally serious in the way only young people can be when they still believe adults are supposed to have answers.
Unfortunately, one of the adults in charge is me.
And I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.
I work in software. Which means I get to see the future slightly before it arrives and runs everyone over. The waves hit our beach first. The water is already at knee height. We’re still debating whether it’s technically a “flood.”
AI is not coming.
It is here. It is redesigning work in real time. Quietly. Efficiently. Without asking permission from the education system.
Meanwhile, my daughters have been prepared for a world that no longer exists.
They were told:
- Study hard.
- Get good grades.
- Pick a career.
- Work steadily.
- Things will improve.
This was a beautiful plan in 1997.
Today, “pick a career” feels a bit like investing in a VHS repair business.
The Educational Time Capsule
Our schools are still training for:
- Stable professions
- Linear progression
- Clear credentials
- Defined roles
AI has politely responded: “That’s adorable.”
We have educated them for a world of fixed ladders.
They are entering a world of moving floors.
And here’s the part that hurts: they are anti-AI.
Which, on an emotional level, I understand. If a tidal wave appears on the horizon, your first instinct is not to applaud the engineering. It is to shout, “That seems unhelpful.”
But AI does not care whether we approve of it. It is not waiting for a vote.
The Phones
Then there’s the small matter of the smartphones.
We gave children portable dopamine casinos and acted surprised when anxiety increased.
We introduced social comparison at scale and called it “staying connected.”
We built a system where teenage self-worth is measured in metrics.
And then we said, “Why are you stressed?”
That one’s on us.
The Economic Reality Show
Let’s quickly review what else we handed them:
- Housing priced like collectible art
- Asset inflation that rewards ownership over effort
- Decades of money printing
- Long retirements funded by future taxpayers
- Political systems that look increasingly like improv comedy
And now we’re shocked they’re suspicious of institutions.
If the system feels broken, people will reach for something loud and disruptive. That’s not madness. That’s pattern recognition.
The Software Guy Problem
Here’s the uncomfortable bit.
I can see the shift.
I see developers being replaced not by robots with red eyes, but by tools that quietly produce 80 percent of the output in seconds.
I see design abstraction collapsing.
I see “knowing how” being replaced by “knowing what to ask.”
I see entire layers of middle work thinning out.
And I come home to daughters who are being told to revise for exams that test memory in a world where intelligence is now rented by the minute.
That’s when the guilt creeps in.
Have I prepared them?
Or have I raised them inside a system that is dissolving?
The Real Fear
The real fear is not that AI will destroy everything.
It’s that the transition will be messy.
The waves are already hitting the shore in tech.
They will roll through law, medicine, marketing, finance, education.
Not as apocalypse.
As erosion.
Slow enough to debate.
Fast enough to destabilise.
And young people will feel it first.
So What Do You Do?
This is the part where a good parenting blog provides a solution.
I regret to inform you that I do not have one.
But I have suspicions.
The future may reward:
- Creativity over compliance
- Adaptability over credentials
- Emotional intelligence over rote knowledge
- Builders over memorisers
Maybe the real preparation isn’t teaching them how to fit into the system.
Maybe it’s teaching them how to navigate when the system shifts.
Which sounds noble, until you realise it means raising resilient, curious humans in a culture engineered to distract them.
Am I Failing Them?
Maybe.
Or maybe every generation feels this when the ground moves.
The difference is that this time, the ground is moving because we built the machine that’s moving it.
And my daughters are watching.
The irony is that they distrust AI.
I don’t blame them.
But I also know ignoring it won’t stop it.
The flood is not ideological.
It’s mathematical.
And so here I am:
A software father.
Watching the future arrive.
Hoping that raising thoughtful, kind, flexible humans matters more than preparing them for specific job titles.
If that turns out to be wrong, I may need to move in with them.
Assuming they can afford a house.
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