I May Never Be an AI Native, but I Can Be an AI Immigrant

I didn’t grow up as an AI native — I wasn’t born into a world where GenAI had already transformed every aspect of daily living. But as we head toward this new era, I’ve been trying to adapt the way an immigrant learns a new environment.

Instead of taking more courses, I decided to focus on changing my habits.

I started with something as simple as breakfast. Could AI help me find options that were more nutritionally balanced, quick to prepare, and still tasted good? Nothing groundbreaking—just a practical menu that fit my mornings.

Then I started noticing small frustrations at work. I was constantly looking up which company week number a given date fell in. One day, I used AI to make a full-year calendar with those week numbers and printed it out.

It was just a calendar, but something fundamentally shifted in my mindset. I started asking, “Could I make a tool that works for me?”

That question quickly grew into bigger projects.

At work, our team generates a lot of HTML reports, but sharing them smoothly was always a headache. So I built a web app that made reports easier to share and embed in dashboards.

Outside work, I developed a full-stack personalized learning tool, something I’d always wished someone would build. I deployed it on Railway, and shared it with friends.

Maybe people of my generation will never be true “AI natives.” But immigrants learn a new culture by living in it — until one day, they realize it has changed how they think, what they try, and what they believe is possible.