By Lee Chong Ming
Publication Date: 2026-02-09 00:08:00
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Asif Saleem, a financial services go-to-market lead for Japan and the Asia Pacific region at Google. Asif is the father of 13-year-old Usman Asif and 18-year-old Shanzey Asif. It’s been edited for length and clarity.
It’s important for parents to help kids understand we’re going through a very transformative time. This is like the era when the internet or mobile first emerged. With AI, it may be even bigger.
Kids need to understand this and embrace the technology. Whatever they end up studying — computer science, English, or philosophy — they can make AI part of it.
I was curious about Cursor and some of the other vibecoding tools, so I joined a few “Code with AI” weekend sessions for executives.
I really enjoyed it. Within a matter of hours, we were able to develop different applications. I developed a statement analyzer for a financial services system.
