Interviewed by CatGPT: How I Rebuilt My Career Around AI

Watch the full interview on YouTube:

Key Topics Covered

The Red Pill Moment

• How ChatGPT doing my data science job 100x faster triggered an anxiety attack
• Why I liquidated my 401k to explore AI full-time
• "Sticks and stones won't tell you how to make fire, but intelligence will"

Meeting Reid Hoffman

• The 5-hour conversation that changed everything
• Building a custom GPT on Reid's corpus of work
• Going from solo hacker to Reid's AI expert

Vibe Coding & The Future of Programming

• Being the first vibe coder before it was even a term
• Why "Are you technical?" is the wrong question now
• How to compete without an ML degree
• Should people still learn to code in 2025?

Playing vs Working with AI

• Why using AI only for your job means missing 90% of its value
• The yapper metagame: "Yappers and ADHD are the new superheroes"
• Asking dumb questions without judgment
• Agency as the ultimate optimization

The Personal Cost

• 14-hour days in self-imposed isolation
• Dating challenges: "Can you just not talk about AI?"
• Imposter syndrome while being recruited as CTO
• Finding your network when you feel alone

Highlights

• 0:00 The setup: from solo hacking to AI acceleration
• 2:27 Becoming "red-pilled" by AI
• 4:14 Watching ChatGPT do his data science work 100x faster
• 6:01 "Sticks and stones won't tell you how to make fire, but intelligence will"
• 8:05 The daily AI routine that replaced his old workflow
• 10:03 AI use cases for farmers and small businesses
• 12:06 Why your network keeps you from going to zero
• 14:04 Learning technical systems by asking "dumb" questions
• 17:13 "I'm not limited by everything I've ever worked on, I'm limited by the questions I ask"
• 18:14 Building a chatbot on Reid Hoffman's corpus
• 24:00 Imposter syndrome while shipping faster than before
• 30:04 "Good prompt engineers are like spellcasting"
• 32:17 Should people still learn to code in 2025?
• 34:24 "If you're going to take Adderall... you might as well pay for GPT-4"
• 38:03 Identity, value, and meaning in the AI era
• 42:01 Curiosity beats gatekeeping in AI adoption
• 48:02 Dream bigger: you are not limited by your past