For Kiara Nirghin, the 24-year-old co-founder and chief technology officer of the applied AI lab Chima, the narrative that her generation uses artificial intelligence as a cheat code is not just wrong—it ignores a fundamental shift in human cognition.
The Stanford computer science alum and Peter Thiel fellow argued that while older generations view AI as a tool to be adopted, Gen Z views it as a native language. However, this fluency comes with a unique burden: the “AI anxiety” of keeping pace with technology that is currently the “worst” it will ever be.
Speaking at Fortune Brainstorm AI in San Francisco, Nirghin addressed the tension between the perception of Gen Z and their reality as builders. “The truth is the younger generation isn’t adopting AI,” she said. “We’re growing up fluent in AI.” This distinction is critical in the workplace. While a manager might see an employee using an AI agent as cutting corners, Nirghin said she sees a shift in the architecture of work itself.
“We aren’t thinking about coding from scratch,” she explained. “We’re thinking about coding with a coding agent side by side.” Far from being generation shortcut, Gen Z are trailblazers, she argued.
“That fundamentally changes how you write, how you take tests, how you apply to jobs or different applications, because it’s not from the ground up,” Nirghin said about working side by side with an agent. “I think what that really means is that this broad level of use cases and applications we’re seeing is really being pioneered by the younger generation.”
