The heat beams down on me. It’s another blistering hot day in Las Vegas, the last place you would expect SpaceXAI to host a hackathon, an event where programmers see what they can build in a few hours. I lift large packs of soda up the stairs — SpaceXAI hasn’t provided volunteer organizers with a humanoid robot (yet) to help with the manual labor of a hackathon.
Years ago, these hackathons would be held over a Saturday and Sunday, fueled by energy drinks and pizza. Now, with artificial intelligence, they last just two hours. Two hours to build a fully functioning game hosted on a website. The winner built an augmented reality boxing game, something that would have taken a few days just a few years ago. Another built a wizard game with stunning graphics, something that could have been a console game in the 2000s.
Talking with these engineers, I noticed that each of them had a full-time engineering job and a side-hustle software business that was also generating revenue. Entrepreneurs are constrained by two things: time and money.
AI has solved the time constraint in development, allowing part-time entrepreneurs to code changes from their phones simply by prompting an AI app connected to their software’s codebase.
On the business front, AI agents can be created to manage finances, automate marketing, and build sales lists. What used to take 50 to 60 hours a week now takes 10. And all with limited risk and a full-time salary.
What has started as a trend among talented engineers could give way to a wave of nontechnical entrepreneurs unlike any the United States has ever seen. As AI advances in America, those with deep knowledge of industry problems that can be solved with software will begin to build and charge for those services.
Even my own daughter has taken an interest in making video games for her friends. Will video games created by 7-year-olds replace the childhood entrepreneurial lemonade stand?
TRUMP SAYS HUMANS CONTROL THE BOMB. THE CODE DOESN’T KNOW THAT YET
The public, even those of us outside the technology sector, must prepare for a future in which software can be created in an instant. Software is becoming a commodity, and people can act now to participate in a future of abundance by learning to use tools such as Cursor, Codex, and Claude Code.
In the 1800s, every American town lost someone to the gold rush. In the 2030s, every town will have software builders — and this time, they don’t have to leave to strike gold. The time to build is now, America.
Chris Ford is the founder of Legalyze.ai, an AI software company for law firms to review medical records and case documents.