Carnegie Mellon math professor and former U.S. Math Olympiad coach Po-Shen Loh argues that as AI surpasses humans at logic and language, the most important skill young people can develop is autonomous thinking. He warns that using AI to do school writing is 'like driving a car one mile for exercise,' explains why AI now solves original Olympiad problems he couldn't, and lays out a win-win-win education ecosystem that pairs middle schoolers, high-school math talent, and Broadway-caliber acting coaches to teach kids how to generate their own ideas, empathize, and think critically in an age of biased information.
Sualeh Asif is the 26-year-old co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Anysphere, the company behind Cursor - the AI-powered code editor that reached $2 billion in annual recurring revenue faster than any B2B company in history. Born in Karachi, Pakistan, he represented his country at the International Mathematical Olympiad three times before studying at MIT, where he and three classmates built the product that is now rewriting how software gets made. Valued at $1.3 billion on Forbes' 2026 Billionaires List, Asif went from teaching math to Karachi students to co-architecting the tool powering 50,000+ enterprises including Nvidia, Adobe, and Uber.