I Built an App for Teens

Here is a short video showing a teen help app I built this week.

It is an iPhone app written in Swift. I do not know Swift. The app took about a week to imagine and create. It was done by using Claude 3.7 inside an app called Cursor. 100% of the code was from them.

I had the help of my 3 sons Liam (22); Dylan (23) and Luke (18). You can download the video embedded above to see what AI can build.

It is a real app that has built in support for OpenAI; Anthropic; Perplexity and DeepSeek.

The App uses the AIs as a buddy, a coach, a therapist and a counsellor to the teen user allowing private conversation and problem solving.

In the real world there is a large shortage of these people and schools are overwhelmed. Luke has epilepsy and some school challenges and was the inspiration for 'Reflect'.

The app can't replace a professional but it gives a teen a private place to talk and think and. yes, Reflect. If you have a teen who would be a good tester reach out.

In this week's That Was The Week we have a lot of discussion about what AI can and cannot do.

Ivan Mehta discloses that 25% of YC's cohort use AI for >95% of codebases, enabling solo founders to launch products in days.

CoreWeave's IPO filing ($1.9B revenue, 737% YoY growth) exemplifies AI infrastructure demand, while OpenAI spin-offs (Anthropic, xAI, Safe Superintelligence) form a $500B+ "Constellation" ecosystem.

Benn Stancil critiques YC's fading relevance as AI tools let founders bypass traditional incubation. Snowflake's $200M accelerator expansion and Ron Hodgkinson's (SignalRank) VC consolidation analysis reflect a broader trend: capital concentrates in established players, leaving emerging managers struggling.

Alex Kantrowitz's "Okay, I'm Starting to Think AI Can Do My Job After All" is also pointing out the fast moving change of assumptions about what AI can do. He acknowledges AI's role as a productivity tool but warns of structural shifts: leaner teams, reduced hiring, and potential job losses as AI handles tasks like research, drafting, and customer interactions. This "force multiplier" effect risks concentrating economic power while eroding middle-skill employment pathways.

Ben Buchanan, talking to Ezra Klein, warns AGI could destabilize global order by 2028 if current development trajectories hold, echoing Dario Amodei's warnings, both below.

He critiques the U.S. for treating AI as a purely commercial race while China strategically prioritizes military-civil fusion. Export controls on Nvidia chips, while necessary, risk driving China toward open-source alternatives like DeepSeek's models - a dynamic Buchanan calls "the open-source trap." The discussion highlights how China's $7B investment in AI infrastructure (vs. U.S.'s $3.2B) exploits Western open-source breakthroughs to bypass sanctions. Buchanan argues for "asymmetric containment": restricting compute access to hostile states while fostering alliances with democracies via initiatives like the U.S.-EU AI Accord.

Klein adopts a more definitive position on AGI's near-term arrival, repeatedly framing it as inevitable within a "two- to three-year time frame." He challenges Buchanan to justify the Biden administration's limited preparatory actions, arguing that AGI demands urgent, large-scale policy responses akin to wartime mobilization. This contrasts with his earlier skepticism of LLMs as "bullshit generators" in 2023, marking a stark shift.

On the plus side Dwarfish Patel sees fully automated firms that will harness AI's unique digital advantages to create organizations that are more scalable, cohesive, and adaptable than traditional human-centric models. By capitalizing on the abilities to copy, merge, and evolve, AI-driven companies will operate with unprecedented efficiency and strategic coherence.

My take: We are entering a phase of human existence where autonomous agents will increasingly help us achieve goals. Each of us has differing goals. Many of them will become achievable wherever they previously were not. Its real and exciting.

Essays of the Week