The question we should stop asking our kids

And what to ask instead in a world where AI changes everything

Daniel Plomp

16 Feb 2026 — 4 min read

I've been giving my kids terrible career advice.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" I've asked it dozens of times. Doctor, teacher, veterinarian — the usual parade. I nodded at each answer like a wise dad who had things figured out.

I didn't.

Last month I was listening to an economics podcast when something hit me. That question — the one we all ask — is based on an assumption that's quietly falling apart. And I've been passing it on like an heirloom nobody needs anymore.

What we're really asking

"What do you want to be?" sounds innocent. It's not. It's a market question in disguise.

What we're actually asking: What scarce skill will you sell?

The logic:

Find something few people can do
Get certified, trained, credentialed
Exchange that scarcity for money

Become a doctor — years of training keeps supply low. Lawyer — the bar exam filters competitors. Engineer — math scares people off.

I did this myself. I learned to code when developers were scarce. Good strategy. Worked for twenty years.

Here's the problem: that scarcity is disappearing.

The world is flipping

This isn't speculation. It's already happening:

GitHub Copilot now writes over 40% of code in projects that use it
Solar energy costs dropped 99% since 1976 — and it's still falling
AI matches or beats radiologists on certain diagnostic scans
Legal AI reviews thousands of contracts in the time a junior lawyer does ten
AI models that cost $100M to train in 2023 can be replicated for under $5M today

AI writes code now. Not perfectly, but well enough that I'm directing it more than typing myself.

AI drafts contracts, analyzes documents, diagnoses conditions. Robots build, clean, transport. Energy costs keep dropping.

When AI handles knowledge work, robots handle physical work, and cheap energy powers both — where's the scarcity?

Gone.

I spent two decades building a career on "I can do what others can't." Now my twelve-year-old could ship an app with the right prompts.

That's not a complaint. It's just reality.

The new question

If supply becomes infinite, asking "what will you supply?" makes no sense.

The better question: What do you actually want?

Not what you can offer. What you want to exist.

Sounds indulgent. I thought so too. But think about it: in a world where building things becomes easy, the bottleneck isn't capability. It's vision.

Elon Musk — love him or not — gets this. He didn't ask "what skill can I sell?" He said "I want humans on Mars" and worked backward. Everything he built flows from that want.

Most of us were never taught to want like that. We were taught to supply.

What I'm trying differently now

I have three daughters. The oldest is sixteen. The advice that worked for me is already outdated for her.

Here's what I'm learning to do instead:

Stop praising "practical" choices. I used to nudge toward stable careers. But stable is a moving target now. The audacious idea might be the practical one.

Talk about orchestrating, not just doing. Knowing how to code matters less than knowing what to build. Directing AI toward a vision — that's the skill.

Ask better questions. Not "what subject are you good at?" but "what would you fix if you had unlimited help?"

The part I'm still figuring out

I don't have this solved. I'm forty-something, raised on scarcity thinking, trying to unlearn it while teaching my kids something better.

It's uncomfortable. "Follow your passion" always sounded naive to me. "Be practical" felt responsible.

But maybe the practical thing now is following what you actually want. Because if supply is becoming infinite, the only scarce thing left is a clear vision of what's worth building.

I'm still learning to ask myself that question.

At least I stopped asking my kids the wrong one.