🌟 Founder musings
The missing semester just got a new teacher
This week Anthropic released what some are calling an "AI job destruction detector", a research paper measuring which jobs are actually being displaced by AI, not just theoretically exposed to it. One number jumped out at me: hiring of 22-to-25-year-olds into AI-exposed roles has dropped 14% since ChatGPT launched. Not layoffs. Hiring. The door into those jobs is quietly closing before most people even notice it.
I've been sitting with that number all week.
It landed right as I was running a pilot session with a group of high schoolers. Watching them get excited about Cursor and Claude and the other tools they were building with, it hit me differently than it might have a year ago. Because those entry-level jobs that were disappearing from the research? They used to serve a purpose that had nothing to do with the work itself. Data entry, basic coding, document review - nobody did those because they were meaningful. They did them because they were the missing semester. The bridge between what college teaches and what companies actually need. You learned to work in the real world by doing the boring stuff first.
AI is automating the boring stuff. Which sounds like good news, until you realize it's also automating the on-ramp.
But here's what I noticed watching those students: the tools themselves have become the missing semester. When a high schooler spends an afternoon wrestling with Cursor, figuring out when to trust what it generates and when to push back, debugging something that looked right but wasn't, they're building the same judgment that a year of entry-level work used to build. Maybe faster. Definitely earlier. All that they need is the structure and definition on what is needed.
And then this happened. One of our students forwarded me an email they'd received from Vercel. Their project, built on v0.dev, had a security vulnerability. They needed to upgrade their Next.js version. The student had no idea what any of that meant, so they messaged asking. And right there, in that exchange, they learned what a software vulnerability is, why it matters, what happens when you ignore it, and why companies send those emails in the first place.
No classroom planned that lesson. No textbook anticipated it. It happened because the student had a real project, deployed on real infrastructure, behaving the way real software behaves. That email from Vercel taught them something most computer science graduates don't encounter until their first job.
That's the power of the on-ramp. Not the repetitive tasks. The unexpected ones.
AI is reshaping the workforce horizon. It's already changing what a college degree means. It's coming for K-12 next, whether schools are ready or not. The students I'm watching who will land on their feet aren't the ones who used AI to skip the thinking. They're the ones who used it to do more of it.
-Janani
🗓️ Opportunities to not miss for high schoolers!
Registration Deadline: March 18, 2026 | Submission Deadline: April 20, 2026
What: One of the world's largest tech programs for girls and gender-diverse youth, where teams build a real mobile or web app to solve a community problem and pitch it globally. This year, AI integration is part of the judging rubric, making it a perfect fit for students already building with AI tools.
Who: Girls, nonbinary, gender-fluid, and transgender students ages 8-18. Teams of 1-5. No prior coding experience required.
Format: Students work through a free curriculum, build an app, create a pitch video and business plan, and submit for judging across three rounds - Quarterfinals, Semifinals, and the Technovation World Summit in October.
Prizes: Seed funding to bring winning apps to market, global recognition, and a spot at the World Summit for finalists.
What Makes It Special: This isn't just a competition, it's a full season of structured building, mentorship, and real product development. Students leave with a working app, a pitch, and a portfolio piece that speaks for itself on college applications.
Perfect for: Girls who want to build something real, develop entrepreneurial skills, and compete on a global stage, all for free.
🚀 Stay Inspired
💼 The entry-level job as we know it is disappearing
For generations, ambitious young people started careers the same way: show up, handle the repetitive work, prove yourself, climb the ladder. Steve Jobs debugged arcade games on the night shift. The entry-level grind was the path in.
That path is closing. According to a March 2026 Inc. piece, the tasks that used to define entry-level roles - data entry, basic coding, document review, research synthesis, financial modeling - are now handled by AI systems in seconds. The traditional proving ground is being automated before the next generation even arrives.
But here's the flip side: the people who will thrive aren't waiting to see how this plays out. They're the ones who understand how AI does those tasks, because they've built systems like that themselves. The same AI replacing the entry-level analyst is a superpower in the hands of someone who knows how to build with it, direct it, and know when to override it.
The new entry-level isn't about doing the repetitive work. It's about having the judgment to manage AI doing it. That's not a technical skill. It's a thinking skill. And it develops through building things, not watching tutorials.
🌏 A VC who bet $50M on AI before anyone believed him just predicted student’s future
Vinod Khosla invested $50 million in OpenAI when it was a nonprofit that almost nobody took seriously. He sent an apology letter to his investors for making what he called a "foolhardy" bet. That investment is now worth orders of magnitude more, and Khosla is widely considered one of the most prescient technology investors alive.
In a recent Fortune interview, he laid out what he sees coming by 2040: almost all expertise globally will be free, most labor will be handled by robotics and AI for the cost of a monthly subscription, and healthcare and education will approach zero cost. His most striking line, delivered matter-of-factly: "It's pretty unlikely a 5-year-old today will be looking for a job."
What does that mean for students right now? Khosla's answer is surprisingly direct. The old advice of "study hard, get into a good college, get a good job" will become bad advice within 15 years. The new advice, which he says is already emerging: follow your passion. Because surviving will no longer be the hard part. Creating will be.
But his optimism comes with a condition: policy has to get it right, and individuals have to start building now. Between 2030 and 2040, he says, those who use AI will clearly outpace those who don't, whether that's a person, a company, or a country. The window to build that fluency is open. It won't stay open forever.
💻 Program spotlight
Learning to build with AI tools
There's a version of "using AI" that looks productive but doesn't actually build anything: copy a prompt, get an answer, move on. That's consuming AI. What Flintolabs students are learning is something different.
At Flintolabs, our students learn to work with Cursor, an AI-powered coding environment that lets you build software by collaborating with AI in real time. The difference between Cursor and simply pasting code from ChatGPT is significant. With tools like Cursor, you're in the driver's seat of a codebase. You make decisions. You debug what breaks. You understand why one approach works and another doesn't. The AI is a collaborator, not a replacement for thinking.
What students discovered quickly: AI tools like Cursor are extraordinarily powerful when you bring real problem-solving intent to them. The students who made the most progress weren't the ones who typed the most prompts. They were the ones who could clearly articulate what they were trying to build, read the AI's output critically, and course-correct when something went wrong.
This is exactly the skill Vinod Khosla is talking about when he describes the "interim period" where every professional will have AI interns to direct and leverage. The students learning to do that in high school, while their peers are still just using AI to summarize text, are building a genuine lead.
In a world where the tools themselves are becoming free and universal, the differentiator is judgment. And judgment is built through doing.
🔥 Ready to build before college?
🎁 April cohort enrollment now open
Our March cohort is underway, and our April cohort is open for enrollment now. If your student has been thinking about joining, this is the moment.
Here's what you get with just one hour per week for 6 months:
✅ Hands-on AI skills through building real applications, not watching lectures
✅ 3 transferable college credits from University of Colorado Denver
✅ Portfolio of real work that demonstrates capability to colleges and employers
✅ Small class sizes (capped at 20 students) ensuring personalized attention
✅ Advanced concepts like OpenCV, Minimax algorithms, computer vision, and more
✅ The critical thinking and problem-solving skills employers desperately need
While college grads struggle with workplace readiness and entry-level roles disappear to automation, Flintolabs students are building portfolios of real work, exactly the kind of demonstrated capability that matters when so much else is automated away.
Classes start Saturday, April 4!
Our program has a 5-star rating with reviews from both students and parents.
Questions? Email us at [email protected]
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