The US$20 Threat to Your Child's Career

A Master of Science and PhD at Carnegie Mellon.

A postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford.

Being named one of "10 Women to Watch in Tech" by Inc. Magazine, and being chosen as one of BBC's "100 Women" in 2017.

These accomplishments and accolades, achieved by neuroscientist Vivienne Ming, would make any Asian parent proud. Yet Ming’s early years and young adulthood (she is 54 now)  would have made her the black sheep of any Asian family. She struggled with her grades, dropped out of university, endured depression, homelessness, even a suicide attempt. She only returned to school when she was almost 30. Today she is a world-renowned AI expert.

In large part due to her convoluted path to the top, Ming is tolerant of failure, and this sensibility has shaped the way she raises her kids. In her home, her son conducts electronics experiments in one corner while her daughter paints in another; on the whiteboard on the wall, her kids make scattered notes for future projects. Ming just published Robot-proof: when machines have all the answers, build better people. Its gist is "The world already has the correct answers, often available at no cost, The true value your child brings lies in the unique insights they can provide."

I wish more Chinese parents could adopt Ming’s mindset. As a private tutor, I all too often hear parents complaining about their children along the lines of “He got such a low mark on his test.” These parents only have to read the many recent headlines about AI displacing professionals (software engineers, financial analysts, lawyers) to realize that the rules that worked for previous generations have become obsolete. It used to be that just by becoming good at guessing exam answers, one could get into a good university, and then earn a decent living as a good-enough professional providing good-enough answers to routine issues. But when a $20/month AI subscription can provide many of the same answers faster, mere competence has become a liability rather than a smart career move.

I do fear being replaced by AI too, so every time I finish a class or a piece of writing, I try to remember to ask myself “Would AI be able to do what you just did?” If the answer is yes, I force myself to work at a higher level next time.  A measure of how dated our education system is, if we ask of any homework or test “Could it help students develop qualities that AI isn’t that good at, like creativity and originality?”, the answer is almost certainly no.