I would strongly recommend reading the mission statement [1] of OpenAI. There are major players in the industry working against the issue of the disparity that

I would strongly recommend reading the mission statement [1] of OpenAI. There are major players in the industry working against the issue of the disparity that AI will almost certainly create. As for your key point, defining yourself let alone your future relative to the paths other people took is pointless. Look at things from a different perspective. Notch built a game of no great technical sophistication where you play with blocks. He did it during his spare time after work. And became a billionaire in the process. Does the fact that you could probably build it from scratch now mean anything about your future? No, not really. Would it mean anything if you could not? Again, no not really. You alone determine your future, or at least heavily influence the probability distributions of it. [1] - https://blog.openai.com/introducing-openai/ https://blog.openai.com/introducing-openai/