Teenagers dreaming of following in the footsteps of Bill Gates may want to take note of what Alexandr Wang has to say. The 28-year-old co-founder of Scale AI, valued at $29 billion, believes today’s teens have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to shape the future by mastering artificial intelligence coding tools. Speaking on the TBPN podcast, Wang urged young people to devote as much time as possible to what he calls “vibe coding.”
“This is an incredible moment of discontinuity,” Wang explained on TBPN. “If you just happen to spend, like, 10,000 hours playing with the tools and figuring out how to use them better than other people, that’s a huge advantage.”
A Bill Gates moment for Gen Z
Wang compared the current AI revolution to the early years of personal computing, when a teenage Bill Gates famously sneaked out of his house at night to practice programming. Just as Gates leveraged his early exposure to computers into building Microsoft, Wang believes today’s teens could make their mark by immersing themselves in AI tools.
“That moment is happening right now,” Wang said. “If you are 13 years old, you should spend all of your time vibe coding. That’s how you should live your life.”
Will AI wipe out coding jobs?
Despite his enthusiasm, Wang admitted that within five years, AI models could write virtually all the code he has produced in his lifetime. This has fueled anxiety about the future of programming careers. Companies are already turning to AI-powered coding assistants, sometimes reducing their reliance on human developers.
Yet leading figures in the industry insist this does not make coding irrelevant. Andrew Ng, co-founder of Google Brain, countered in a March 2025 LinkedIn post that discouraging people from learning to code is “some of the worst career advice ever given.” Ng argued that as coding becomes easier, more people should be coding — not fewer.
Coding as the new literacy
Ng’s perspective reframes coding as a critical skill for the AI age. He stressed that knowing the “language of software” enables people to guide AI tools with precision, resulting in far more effective outcomes than someone who simply types vague prompts. “One of the most important skills in the future will be the ability to tell a computer exactly what you want,” Ng wrote.
This mirrors the way artists who understand art history can get better results from AI art tools by using specialized vocabulary. Similarly, those fluent in coding can unlock the full potential of AI-driven programming platforms.
For Alexandr Wang, who Forbes estimates to be worth $3.2 billion and who was recently tapped as Meta’s chief AI officer, the path to big breakthroughs is clear: embrace AI coding now, and commit the time to mastering it. For today’s 13-year-olds, the message is unmistakable — spend your hours learning to “vibe code,” because this might just be the generation’s Bill Gates moment.
“This is an incredible moment of discontinuity,” Wang explained on TBPN. “If you just happen to spend, like, 10,000 hours playing with the tools and figuring out how to use them better than other people, that’s a huge advantage.”
A Bill Gates moment for Gen Z
Wang compared the current AI revolution to the early years of personal computing, when a teenage Bill Gates famously sneaked out of his house at night to practice programming. Just as Gates leveraged his early exposure to computers into building Microsoft, Wang believes today’s teens could make their mark by immersing themselves in AI tools.
“That moment is happening right now,” Wang said. “If you are 13 years old, you should spend all of your time vibe coding. That’s how you should live your life.”
Will AI wipe out coding jobs?
Despite his enthusiasm, Wang admitted that within five years, AI models could write virtually all the code he has produced in his lifetime. This has fueled anxiety about the future of programming careers. Companies are already turning to AI-powered coding assistants, sometimes reducing their reliance on human developers.
Yet leading figures in the industry insist this does not make coding irrelevant. Andrew Ng, co-founder of Google Brain, countered in a March 2025 LinkedIn post that discouraging people from learning to code is “some of the worst career advice ever given.” Ng argued that as coding becomes easier, more people should be coding — not fewer.
Coding as the new literacy
Ng’s perspective reframes coding as a critical skill for the AI age. He stressed that knowing the “language of software” enables people to guide AI tools with precision, resulting in far more effective outcomes than someone who simply types vague prompts. “One of the most important skills in the future will be the ability to tell a computer exactly what you want,” Ng wrote.
This mirrors the way artists who understand art history can get better results from AI art tools by using specialized vocabulary. Similarly, those fluent in coding can unlock the full potential of AI-driven programming platforms.
For Alexandr Wang, who Forbes estimates to be worth $3.2 billion and who was recently tapped as Meta’s chief AI officer, the path to big breakthroughs is clear: embrace AI coding now, and commit the time to mastering it. For today’s 13-year-olds, the message is unmistakable — spend your hours learning to “vibe code,” because this might just be the generation’s Bill Gates moment.
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