I have a son who's almost 2.

He's at the stage where everything is a discovery — the dog's water bowl, the TV remote, the fact that gravity exists. Pure curiosity, zero filter.

And honestly? I catch myself staring at him sometimes thinking: what the hell am I supposed to teach this kid?

Because the world he's growing up in looks nothing like the one I grew up in. And it's changing faster than any generation before him has ever had to deal with.

So when the Wall Street Journal sat down with five AI executives — the people literally building the technology that's reshaping every industry — and asked them what they tell their own kids about careers, I paid attention.

Their answers surprised me.

Here's what you'd expect: "Learn Python. Get into machine learning. Study computer science or get left behind."

That's not what they said. Not even close.

Daniela Amodei is the President and co-founder of Anthropic — the company behind Claude, one of the most powerful AI models on the planet. She's as close to the center of this earthquake as anyone alive.

Her advice to her kids? Play around. Experiment. Try things out.

She said people need to know how to use AI, but not necessarily how to build it. The skills that matter most? Flexibility. Adaptability. Critical thinking. The ability to challenge assumptions and think deeply.

And here's the part that really got me — she made a case for a traditional liberal arts education. Not because it's nostalgic. Because developing real critical thinking requires friction. It requires doing hard things. Sitting with complex problems. Wrestling with ambiguity.

AI can't do that for you.

Leaders from Microsoft and Wharton echoed the same themes. Across the board, the consensus wasn't "future-proof your kid with a CS degree." It was: teach them to be adaptable, creative, empathetic, and capable of deep thought.

The people building the robots are betting on the humans.

Let's zoom out for a second.

AI can already write code, draft legal contracts, generate marketing copy, analyze financial data, and pass medical licensing exams. And it's getting better every month.

So what's left?

Judgment. AI can generate ten options. A human has to decide which one to bet the company on.

Accountability. When a decision impacts people's lives — hiring, firing, medical treatment, legal outcomes — someone has to own it. AI doesn't sign its name on anything.

Presence. The ability to walk into a room, read the dynamics, build trust, navigate conflict, and lead people through uncertainty. No model does this.

Taste. Knowing what's good — in design, in strategy, in storytelling, in product — is still a deeply human skill. AI can generate infinite options. Curation is the bottleneck.

This is the new career moat. Not technical skills (those are table stakes now). The moat is being the kind of person who can think clearly, communicate persuasively, and make decisions under pressure.

My kid is almost 2. He's not picking a major anytime soon.

But I'm already thinking about the foundation. And here's what I keep coming back to:

1. Curiosity over curriculum. I want him to be the kid who asks "why" five times in a row. Who tears things apart to see how they work. Who isn't afraid to try something and fail at it. That experimental mindset is what every single one of these executives pointed to.

2. Comfort with tools, not dependence on them. By the time he's in school, AI will be as normal as Google. Anthropic's own CEO has predicted that half of entry-level white-collar jobs could be disrupted within the next few years. I want my son to know how to use these tools — to amplify his thinking, not replace it. The way a great chef uses a knife. The tool is powerful, but the skill is in the hands.

3. Deep thinking > fast answers. This one scares me the most. We're raising a generation with instant access to answers for everything. But the ability to sit with a hard problem, tolerate ambiguity, and think through something from first principles — that's the skill that separates leaders from everyone else. And it requires practice. You don't build that muscle with shortcuts. (Anthropic's own research already shows hiring of younger workers has slowed in AI-exposed jobs. The signal is early, but it's there.)

4. Human skills are the new hard skills. Empathy. Communication. The ability to collaborate, persuade, and lead. These aren't soft skills — they're the hardest skills. And they're the ones AI can't replicate. (It's no coincidence that 77% of Gen Zers now say it's important their future job is hard to automate.)

There's something poetic about the fact that the people building the most advanced AI on the planet are telling their kids to read books, think deeply, and develop human skills.

They're not scared of AI. They're building it. But they understand something most people miss:

The future doesn't belong to the people who can do what AI does. It belongs to the people who can do what AI can't.

And right now, my almost-2-year-old is learning that by stacking blocks, knocking them over, and laughing about it.

He's ahead of the curve.

What skills are you prioritizing for your kids in the age of AI? Hit reply — I read every response.