There she was—watching her lean over the table, focused on building a Lego tower with our kids. We’ve always been good at architecting temporary things, haven’t we? A notification pulsed on my phone: ‘75% of future jobs will require skills we can’t test today.’ The familiar weight settled in my chest, but then I watched her hand, calloused from years of parenting, steady the next block. That’s the thing about the future—we’ve always lived with the feeling rather than the fear, haven’t we? We’ve been teaching what matters, right under the AI headlines.
What Lego Towers Can Teach Us About Weathering the Future
I remember the panic when studies first started predicting AI dominance. But watching her teach our children to rebuild a fallen tower, I realized something—the skills that matter are the ones we’re already teaching when they’re not looking:
- The way you kneel – Eye to eye, asking “How do you think we can make this fair?”
- The way they discuss shapes in clouds – Cultivating the curiosity that’s harder to program than any AI
- The way you comfort them after a friend’s harsh words – Building emotional resilience that’s built on the bedrock of our presence
We’ve been negotiating bedtime snack trades with tiny humans who haven’t mastered shoelaces yet. Who would’ve thought the playground was the best tech training ground ever?
The Warmth We’ve Built Through the Cracks
I watched her explain the AI assistant to our children—“Helper, not replacement”—the same gentle tone she used when she first explained the washing machine. It’s not new. This isn’t just about the AI voice, like ‘the assistant’ in the kitchen. The robot’s there, just like the coffee trick, and the AI’s just like the kitchen timer. The differences in the human moments are still in every messy, shared, misstep. When we’re teaching them to cook kimchi jjigae, despite the AI chef that can create it in seconds, we’re honoring the human in the mess.
We’ve survived this before:
- When PCs became our desks
- When the smartphone became our third hand
- When the internet became our alley
This time, we’re older. We know the anchor isn’t the technology. It’s us—the way we’re still here, present, even when the future is a fickle, changing thing.
What Our Friday Night Tradition Teaches Us About AI
We started something simple—unplanned, just like the way most big things in parenting come together. After the kids sleep, we share:
- What technology helped us understand – Like AI language apps, or the way the robot vacuum learned to navigate around the toys
- What human moments made us stop – The way she sat with a tearful child, explaining the irreplaceable value of empathy
- How we’re mixing both – Using AI to craft a family story, but the laughter, the tears, the pauses, those are ours
Our children have started to ask: “What did you help someone today?” instead of purely “What did you work on?” The skills we’re teaching them are the ones that cannot be automated.
What the Future is Really Made of
The night I found her, exhausted, scrolling through the AI forecasts, I saw a faint yellow sticky on her computer: the sticky note was there that night, like it’s been there every night—soft, but profound. The note says: ‘We’re building humans, not machines.’ That’s it, isn’t it? It’s not the jobs, the AI, or the tracks we’re trying to keep ahead. The soft, messy, love we carry? That’s it. The rest of the future will be built in this space. The love we’re nurturing is the most solid future we’re laying today.
We’re teaching them how to comfort a friend—using the language of the heart, not the script.
We’re teaching them this:
- How to comfort a friend – Using the language of the heart, not the script
- How to rebuild a fallen tower – The resilience of quiet hands and determination
- How to ask for help – The strength that comes from vulnerability, not from the answers
The future may be uncertain, but the love we’re nurturing—that’s the surest thing we have.
Source: Walmart CEO expects AI will ‘change literally every job’ – not just engineering, Zdnet, 2025-09-30