Bad news, 30-somethings: You'll likely never be truly AI native

• A former OpenAI robotics lead says engineers in their 30s aren't truly AI native.
• Caitlin Kalinowski said young engineers use AI from the ground up and solve faster than older peers.
• Tech leaders from Reddit to LinkedIn say AI-native graduates have a growing edge at work.

If you're 30-plus, you're likely already at a disadvantage when it comes to AI.

That's according to former OpenAI robotics lead Caitlin Kalinowski, who said that the only truly AI native people right now are those in their early 20s who grew up solving problems with AI from the ground up.

They "use AI so natively that it's like baked into their engineering process," Kalinowski said on an episode of "Lenny's" podcast released on Sunday.

Kalinowski worked at Apple, Oculus VR, and Meta before joining OpenAI's robotics division as a Member of Technical Staff between 2024 and 2026. She now advises AI startups on product strategy, and said in her experience, the most striking shift she's seeing is how younger engineers interact with the technology itself.

"It's very hard to find someone who's in their 30s who can be truly fully AI native," she said.

'We need these folks'

Kalinowski said AI is embedded into how younger engineers think and solve problems.

"They're approaching their problem-solving completely differently because they're using AI from the ground up for everything, and they're much faster, actually," she said.

"We need these folks to teach us how to think," she added.

Other tech leaders, including Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, Otis CEO Judy Marks, Box CEO Aaron Levie, and LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, have also said that AI-native younger workers may have a major advantage in the workplace because they grew up using AI tools instinctively rather than having to adapt to them later in life.

The shift is already influencing how companies operate. Meta, for example, has been pushing employees to become more "AI-native" by embedding AI tools into coding and day-to-day workflows.

Kalinowski's comments also come amid growing anxiety that AI could hollow out entry-level tech jobs.

But Kalinowski sees a more nuanced future: smaller teams, not necessarily junior-less ones.

"I don't see it that way," she said, referring to fears that junior roles in tech firms could be made obsolete because of AI. "I think we need them."

Kalinowski compared today's AI-native generation to early internet natives who grew up alongside the web and smartphones, giving them an intuitive advantage older workers lacked.

"We have to accept that we're not native in these new technologies," she said of older engineers and tech workers adapting to AI later in life.