The first generation of AI-native workers just

The class of 2025 just graduated.

These students started college in 2021, before ChatGPT existed. By fall 2022, they were using it for everything. By 2023, GitHub Copilot was writing their code. By 2024, Claude was helping them think through thesis arguments. By 2025, AI wasn’t a topic they studied. It was the medium they studied in.

Their relationship with AI is fundamentally different from mine.

The difference

I learned to code by memorizing syntax. They learned to code by describing what they wanted and editing what the AI produced. I learned to write by drafting, revising, and starting over. They learned to write by iterating with an AI that could generate first drafts instantly.

I see AI as a tool. A powerful, impressive, sometimes unsettling tool, but a tool. Something I pick up, use, and put down.

They see AI as an environment. Like the internet. You don’t “use” the internet the way you use a hammer. You exist within it. You think through it. It shapes how you approach problems before you even start working on them.

I didn’t learn to think with AI. They did. And I’m honestly not sure which of us has the more accurate understanding of what AI is.

What worries me

Are they thinking, or is the AI thinking for them? When a student generates a first draft with AI and then edits it, where’s the learning? The learning used to be in the struggling. The staring at a blank page. The wrong turns and dead ends and breakthroughs that came from exhaustion.

If you skip the struggle, do you skip the learning?

I don’t know. Stanford’s early research suggests students who use AI effectively learn differently, not less. They spend less time on mechanical tasks and more on critical evaluation. Less time generating. More time judging.

Maybe that’s better. Maybe judging is the more important skill when generation becomes cheap.

What excites me

These graduates will create things I can’t imagine. Not because they’re smarter (I was smart at 22 too). Because they’re starting from a different floor. The baseline capability they walk into a workplace with includes an AI collaborator that can code, write, analyze, and brainstorm.

What I can do alone in a week, they can do with AI in a day. That frees up four days for the things AI can’t do. The creative leaps. The taste decisions. The human judgment that no model, no matter how large, can replicate.

The first AI-native generation just entered the workforce. I’m curious and slightly intimidated. They’re going to build things the rest of us didn’t think to build, because they’ll never know what it’s like to work without AI assistance.

That’s either a loss or a superpower. Probably both.

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