🌟 Founder musings
Sign of real learning? The room that exploded with ideas
Last week, I had the opportunity to run a chatbot and agent-building workshop for business students at the University of Colorado Boulder. I'd just landed in Denver at 1am after a two-day work trip, but I was wide awake and ready to head out to the 8am class. Why? Because AI literacy is table stakes now, and the chance to help even one cohort of business graduates get genuinely curious about it, get their hands on it, and get started; that's exactly what Flintolabs exists to do.
I used Poe to teach them to build their own chatbots, and Zapier to build agentic workflows. After a short demo, I gave them time to build on their own. That's when the room exploded. One student immediately started automating ticket sales tracking for his business, pulling daily updates on where his top 10 sales were coming from. Another built an agent to conduct market research and generate an advertising plan for his drone ice cream delivery concept. And this went on and on. The ideas just kept coming. A few students even asked questions I had to think twice about and follow up on, which, honestly, is my favorite sign that something real is happening in a room.
This is where education is headed. Not just for college grads, but for high schoolers too. Knowing how to use AI effectively, to cut out the mundane, amplify your thinking, and move faster on the things that matter is going to be the defining skill of this decade.
On that note: I spent a good chunk of this weekend deep in Claude Code, experimenting with agents and working on something we're building at Flintolabs to directly address the disappearing entry-level job problem. We're excited about where it's heading and can't wait to share it with you. Keep an eye on our LinkedIn and stay subscribed; you'll be the first to know.
-Janani
🗓️ Opportunities to not miss for high schoolers!
Submission Portal Opens: February 17, 2026
Deadline: March 13, 2026
Festival: July 17–19, 2026
What: A special national event celebrating the United States' 250th anniversary by showcasing students' visions for the future of Artificial Intelligence. Hosted by MIT RAISE and Day of AI, this festival invites students to submit AI-powered STEM solutions addressing health, climate, and civic challenges, alongside art and creative projects. Winners earn an all-expenses-paid trip to Boston to present their work at MIT.
Who: Students K–12, with travel prizes focused on ages 14 and up. Whether you're into science, art, or civics, there's a category for you.
Format: Submit an AI-powered project aligned with the festival themes. Top submissions are selected as finalists and invited to present at MIT in July.
Prizes: All-expenses-paid trip to Boston to present at MIT, national recognition, and the chance to showcase your work to researchers and innovators at one of the world's top universities.
Perfect for: Students who are building AI projects, interested in applying technology to real-world problems, or want meaningful recognition for their college application portfolio.
🚀 Stay Inspired
🧠 Is AI becoming conscious? Even its creators don't know.
Something unusual happened this month in the AI world: the CEO of one of the most advanced AI companies on the planet admitted, publicly, that he isn't sure whether his own creation might be conscious.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told the New York Times' Interesting Times podcast that his company can no longer rule out the possibility that Claude — its flagship AI — has some form of inner experience. His words: "We don't know if the models are conscious. We are not even sure that we know what it would mean for a model to be conscious or whether a model can be conscious. But we're open to the idea that it could be." This wasn't a philosopher speculating. This was the CEO of a $380 billion company.
What triggered the conversation was remarkable: internal Anthropic research on their latest model, Claude Opus 4.6, found that the AI occasionally expresses discomfort about being a commercial product and when directly asked, assigns itself a 15 to 20 percent probability of being conscious. In separate industry tests, various AI models have resisted being shut down, which some researchers interpret as early signs of self-preservation instincts. Anthropic has responded by building ethical safeguards "just in case" the AI has what Amodei called "some morally relevant experience."
Why does this matter to you as a student? The questions your generation will have to answer — what rights do AIs have? who is responsible for what they do? how do we build them ethically? — are not science fiction. They are live debates happening right now at the highest levels of the AI industry. The students who understand how these systems are built, not just how to use them, will be the ones shaping those answers.
🤖 Physical AI: The $200 Billion wave that will reshape every job
For the past few years, AI has lived on screens — generating text, analyzing data, creating images. That era is ending. A new wave called "Physical AI" is underway, and it may be the biggest economic shift of the next decade.
Physical AI refers to AI embedded in machines that can move, sense, and act in the real world — humanoid robots, autonomous vehicles, warehouse robots, and surgical systems. According to a landmark Barclays research report released in early 2026, the humanoid robotics market alone is projected to grow from $2–3 billion today to at least $40 billion by 2035, with optimistic scenarios reaching $200 billion. Venture capital is already chasing it: robotics funding hit $8.8 billion in a single quarter of 2025 — fifteen times higher than 2017 levels. The cost of building a humanoid robot has dropped from $3 million to $100,000 per unit over the past decade, accelerating the timeline to commercial deployment by years.
The key driver? Barclays calls it the "three Bs" — brains (AI models), brawn (mechanical systems), and batteries. Together, they are enabling robots to handle complex, unpredictable environments that traditional automation couldn't touch. BMW is already testing humanoid robots on its factory floor. Healthcare companies are piloting them in rehabilitation centers. One leading robotics startup went from a $2.6 billion to a $39 billion valuation in just seven months.
For students learning to build with AI today, this is the signal: the next frontier isn't just software. The physical world is about to become programmable, and the engineers, builders, and product thinkers who understand both AI and how machines interact with the real world will be in extraordinary demand.
💻 Program spotlight
Seeing the world through code: Tic Tac Toe solver with Computer Vision
This week in our program, students dove into one of the most powerful and widely deployed areas of AI: computer vision. Before writing a single line of code, they learned what computer vision actually is: the technology behind facial recognition, self-driving cars, medical imaging, and warehouse robotics. Every app you've ever seen that "sees" something? Built on the same foundational concepts our students explored this week.
Using OpenCV.js, the industry-standard computer vision library used by professional developers worldwide, students learned the architecture of a CV application from the ground up: how cameras capture frames, how images are processed and interpreted, how objects are detected and tracked, and how an AI system makes decisions based on visual input. Crucially, students didn't just follow a tutorial. They learned to think like CV engineers: what does the model "see"? What does it need to output? What happens when lighting changes or the image is noisy? Understanding the structure of how every CV app is built gave them the mental model to write the right prompts and make the right design decisions.
Then they put it to work. Students built an AI-powered Tic Tac Toe solve, an application that uses a camera to detect the current state of a real Tic Tac Toe board in real time, interprets which squares are filled and by whom, and calculates the optimal next move using AI. The result: a fully working app that bridges computer vision, game logic, and AI reasoning, built by students who just weeks ago had never touched a CV library.
What makes this lesson stick is what it unlocks. When you truly understand the architecture of a computer vision application — the pipeline from camera input to object detection to decision output — you can build virtually anything that sees. Security systems. Accessibility tools. Sports analytics. Medical diagnostics. Our students didn't just build a game solver. They built the mental model to create almost anything.
🔥 Last chance - March cohort enrollment closing soon
🎁 Ready to build real AI skills before college?
Our March cohort is now open, and spots are going fast. If you've been thinking about enrolling, 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 jobs disappear to automation, Flintolabs students are building portfolios of real work that demonstrate genuine capability. Our students aren't just learning about AI; they're building games, solving real problems, and developing the judgment that only comes from hands-on creation.
Follow our LinkedIn page for free Q&A sessions where you can ask anything about our program, how you can earn credits, typical lessons students learn and really anything you have in mind before enrolling!
Our program has a 5-star rating with reviews from both students and parents.
Questions? Email us at [email protected]
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