This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Maitri Mangal, a 26-year-old software engineer at Google, based in New York. Her identity and employment have been verified by Business Insider. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
When I started off as a software engineer, my dad, who also works in tech, kept telling me to get into AI.
I brushed it off because I was just starting off my engineering career, and no one was really talking about AI in 2019, unless they were getting a PhD.
