How do you want to live your life?

Whenever our generation talks about the future, sighing seems unavoidable. Over the shorter and longer conversations I had yesterday and today, I have lost count of how many times I sighed. I actually dislike this sort of behavior—complaining that solves no practical problem—but I cannot help myself. While talking with an old friend, I described it as “the feeling of wanting to hold on to everything.”

I do not think this is merely my own groundless anxiety. It is shared by our generation. In an age of technology advancing at tremendous speed, with AI and its relatives gradually overturning every industry, and with the employment picture looking grim both inside and outside China, where are we supposed to go?

Yesterday, a friend who also studies computer science asked me, “Why are you switching majors? I feel as though AI can replace more and more of computer science. Robotics engineering, which you chose before, seems much more like the future.”

I could guess the rest even though he did not say it. Humanoid robotics is flourishing in China. Frameworks for every kind of DIY project have been made friendly to beginners. JLCPCB’s prices can no longer be described merely as “affordable,” and a few weeks ago I bought a full kilogram of good 3D-printing filament for barely more than RMB 20. The ocean of tutorials online has paved a smooth road for hobbyists, while AI assistance removes the heaviest work of all. Like the sudden idea I had when that WeChat account reached one thousand followers, a project can go from inspiration to finished result in less than a day.

Then again, a large part of why I chose robotics engineering was simply that I had heard too much about CS and wanted to try something different. LETU was not even my first choice at the time. I had, with magnificent lack of realism, set my sights on NUS Computer Science. So in practice, I chose the major rather casually.

After learning more over this past year, whether at Career Fair or in ordinary conversations, demand for this major has not seemed particularly high. I began to ask myself: is this truly something worth spending four years studying, and a calling that can sustain the latter half of my life?

I genuinely enjoy making things with my hands. Most of the LEGO sets I bought as a child were domestic knockoffs, but the excitement was real. In middle school, I willingly poured huge amounts of free time into robotics competitions, completely disregarding my teachers’ bitter but well-meant advice. Yet in America, this “handyman” quality seems common to everyone. Sawing wood to build something is the most ordinary thing imaginable; repairing an appliance comes naturally.

In my first-semester IEP class, I assembled a remote-controlled car by hand under guidance so thorough it was almost babysitting. I naturally enjoyed every part of the process. But did I actually learn anything?

The contrast becomes especially sharp beside a Chinese American friend studying mechanical engineering. In him, I see a freedom that refuses, at the level of instinct, to be confined by a syllabus. Outside class, he asks professors for the 3D model of a vehicle frame, then modifies it wildly without changing any crucial structure. Over meals, he excitedly describes whatever he built in the maker lab that day. Dissatisfied that the school’s SolidWorks curriculum is outdated, he proactively uses other modeling software he learned before to optimize his workflow. Whenever I hear him talk, I sincerely think: this is what learning should feel like.

But I have discovered that I do not seem interested in digging deeper into that field.

The decision to transfer from engineering to computer science has already been made. I still cannot claim with certainty that I will never regret it. I have explained why not engineering. Now it is time to explain why CS.

After a year here, university education feels unlike anything I previously experienced, whether public school, homeschooling, or intensive study programs. The difference is especially obvious in Dr. Gowing’s classes: unless you read the textbook in advance, you can barely keep pace during the lecture. I have never liked previewing material. I always felt that class time alone should be enough to understand and master the knowledge.

Perhaps that works in mathematics and physics, where I have an old foundation to rely on. Computer science and cybersecurity are different. In conversations with my father and classmates, all of us have mentioned how the modern explosion of online information makes learning new knowledge extraordinarily easy. The rise of AI has lowered the threshold to every subject, especially CS.

For example, I only recently learned about cybersecurity competitions called CTFs. From what I have seen, they are not terribly different from Puzzle Hunts. I began following the subject on Bilibili and encountered a story about someone from electrical engineering who trained an AI and used it to win a competition single-handedly. Inspired, I tried a recent event myself. With Gemini’s help, I worked through several challenges without encountering any serious obstacle.

I could not help marveling at how overpowered AI is—roughly the equivalent of the mace in Minecraft, Zenith in Terraria, the Drifter in Silksong, or FLL in the open world of Wuthering Waves. (That may have been too much personal agenda in one sentence.)

In fact, during previous Puzzle Hunts, I had wondered something similar to that electrical-engineering competitor: if AI is already this advanced, what purpose do competitions like these still serve? I certainly cannot train an AI and ride it to a solo championship. But someday in the future, could someone genuinely take an AI they trained themselves all the way to the top of MIT Mystery Hunt?

I do not know.

What I do know is that the future will inevitably exceed our imagination.

I recently watched Cosmic Princess Kaguya!. Setting aside its anime elements, I want to talk about its distinctive retrofuturism. I read an essay comparing it to our generation’s Blade Runner. My first reaction was “not really,” followed shortly by “yes, exactly.”

Retrofuturism, as the name suggests, is the beautiful future imagined by people in the last century, when personal computers had only just become widespread. Looking at Bilibili, Tieba, and Xiaohongshu today—why am I still scrolling through the Chinese-language internet when I live in America?—that imagined “internet” does seem unrealistic. Yet this does not negate the work of the great figures who built the internet throughout history. I did not pay enough attention in computer-history class to start throwing out examples, but today’s internet retains beautiful qualities they left behind: transparency and open source.

While we talked this morning, my father, who once worked in the internet industry, put it this way: in this field, nobody hides every new discovery away. There are no secret techniques passed down only to sons, never daughters, only within the clan, never outside it. All the resources and all the latest research are there in papers and products within easy reach. Unlike industries such as finance, where a trade secret you do not know simply remains unknowable, knowledge on the internet is completely transparent. If you are interested, nothing can stop you.

So am I interested in this field?

Interest is a strange thing. I should have written this article yesterday, while my conversation with my friend was still fresh. Instead, I stubbornly spent half the day sorting out various university matters and sending emails. I suspect the reason was that Dad said, “You must finish it today,” triggering my instinct to rebel.

When an interest becomes an assignment and acquires a deadline and assessment criteria, its charm seems to vanish. Even games have dry spells. When a friend asks me to help push their exploration percentage, I postpone it again and again.

Of course, perhaps I am simply a contrarian brat with the childish instinct to do the opposite of whatever I am told. If so, does something that I could genuinely call “work”—something into which I could pour one hundred percent of my effort—actually exist for me?

In the present age, most people do work they do not like. Their supervisors pressure them. Their companies squeeze them. American policy is becoming increasingly unfriendly to international students. It seems that people can only accept the situation, while the handful standing at the top of the pyramid get to shape everything.

Jack Ma could simply imagine moving a vast commercial empire online and replacing physical banknotes with rows of numbers. Elon Musk could simply imagine whether a car might run on batteries, whether it might perceive its surroundings as the human eye does, whether a returning rocket might be caught as easily as chopsticks pick up food… Meanwhile, the nameless workhorses beneath them merely labor to turn those wild ideas into reality.

Is that truly how it is? Are people genuinely content with nothing more?

I have asked many questions, but in the end, none can be answered by the person I am now. After all, I am only an ordinary student who surveys half a lifetime ahead and then returns to playing games and scrolling through videos. No matter how grandly I speak, once nobody is supervising me, I remain an ordinary person who launches another tense and thrilling round of… well, you know.

What use is there in asking these questions, then? Surely it cannot be merely because someone demanded that I submit this piece tonight?

I will leave them for my future self.