The AI Gold Rush: How Gen X and Older Millennials May Be Finding Their Ikigai

Posted on February 20, 2026 by Dr Anna Stratis, One of Thousands of Relationship Coaches on Noomii.

Over the past year, I’ve noticed something that keeps surprising me —in client sessions, in casual conversations, and in the quiet admissions people make when they finally say out loud what they’ve been doing late at night after their “real” workday ends.

The most avid adopters of AI are not my younger clients.

They’re the ones in their 40s and 50s.

They’re the ones spending real time — serious time — on the side of the desk of their day job. They’re self-educating, experimenting, building workflows, and treating the AI revolution like a new set of tools on the workbench in their garage.

It’s the most fascinating inversion because, if you’d asked me a year ago, I would have assumed the reverse. I would have assumed younger people would be sprinting ahead, while Gen X and older millennials would be reluctant, overwhelmed, or quietly opting out. I would have assumed that those who grew up with smartphones would be the first to embrace the newest frontier of technology — and that those who remember cassette tapes and rotary phones would be more likely to say, “This isn’t for me.”

But what I’m seeing in real life is the opposite: more denial among younger people, and more willingness among the so-called “older” crowd to roll up their sleeves and become self-made AI experts.

Gen X has gotten a lot of flack over the years for being what some say is a forgotten generation. But I’m here to tell you what I see from my coaching niche— Gen X has only gotten started.

Let me tell you about some of these people.

The Designer who learned to multiply herself:
One of my clients is a designer who just crossed 50. She’s been an early adopter of work-smart-not-hard hacks for years now. She stays out of the weeds and maintains a birds-eye view as she builds out her own design enterprise. She’s always put her energy where her unique inputs are needed, building out a well-functioning business that will carry out her vision and free her up to pursue her own passion projects in financial comfort. My client has always been a rebel, believing that, if there’s a better way, I want to know it.

So when the AI boom accelerated, she didn’t write an opinion piece about it. She didn’t debate its ethics for six months and wait for clarity to arrive.

She just started trying things. Voraciously. Testing various AI engines the way a designer tests color, texture and light. Experimenting with automated process flows for faster output at the same high quality. Hopping onto tools like Copilot and Gemini to interweave work across email, cloud storage, calendars, and project systems, thus removing themselves from the minutia in order to work on higher-level visionary stuff.

There was no fanfare. Just an attitude of, “I’m not waiting for someone to tell me what this is. I’m going to learn it by touching it.”

Meanwhile, Younger Creatives Were… Hesitating:
I’ve also been working with younger creatives — talented, soulful people — who’ve shown surprising reluctance to adopt AI. Some of them are deeply committed to boutique, analog process. They love the work of their own hand. They want the brushstroke, the craft, the human fingerprint. They hold a sincere belief (and they’re not wrong) that there will always be a place for manual art in the world: painting, writing, design, craft.

And they’re right to protect that.

But it’s still striking because, alongside that devotion to human-made work, there is honestly a naïve hope that, if they ignore the wave, it won’t splash them.

While AI shouldn’t replace human creativity (we all hope it doesn’t), the refusal to learn these new tools is not likely to be the way to preserve one’s artistic craft.

The Basement Builder: “I’m Going All In.”:
Another client of mine, in their 40’s, isn’t a software engineer by training, but works adjacent to that world. And over the past 18 months, I’ve witnessed this person build out a rather incredible life.

They have intentionally put their day job on the back burner — admittedly, flirting at the edge of underperforming — to spend every other waking moment upskilling on AI.

It’s incredible – they work on one thing for a few hours, and then new tools and options open up, and a whole new suite of projects open up subsequently. When they hit a limitation of AI’s capability today, they wait a week and try again, and by then, AI in its exponential pace of growth is able to continue the project from where it left off.

My client is a self-taught world-class AI expert. And why do I know they’re world-class? Because, at the pace of acceleration of this revolution, there are no branded, certified experts— just those relative few who are devoting daily effort to teaching themselves. They ARE the cream of the crop!

My client is carving out a new role in their workplace as an emerging internal AI expert, who researches, brings in, tailors, and helps adopt cutting-edge tools. They have a dedicated AI agent, who runs other agents. They’re coming up with new ideas, prototyping apps and getting creative by marrying old hardware with new AI-built processes. My client is building things that used to require a small team, and developing mastery in areas they were never formally trained in.

Apparently, we will soon see the first billion-dollar company consisting of 1 solopreneur. And I believe that my client is the kind of person who will break that sound barrier.

Why Gen X? Why Now?

1) They remember when technology had visible guts and a case you could actually unscrew and explore.

Gen X were young in the age of the analog computer, the cassette recorder, the rotary phone. They were there when the logic of technology wasn’t locked behind slick casing. They’re not intimidated by weird error messages, or the idea of trying something and breaking it.

They’re not afraid of tinkering and learning by doing – and this AI boom rewards that sort of fearlessness to fail and try again.

2) They’re at a strange kind of cruising altitude in life.

Many professionals in their 40s and 50s have settled in a comfortable professional groove.
They’re no longer in that jet-fuel, uphill ascent of their 20s and 30s. They’re no longer scrambling to prove, and they’ve established solid credibility. They know how to read a room, how to navigate an organization, how to deliver. And, uncannily, Gen X has naturally discovered how to quietly resist the establishment script, delivering the minimum viable “good enough” to get by, while keeping their real energy for exploring what’s next.

And because of that, they have just enough bandwidth to experiment with these new tools.

Sometimes it’s a true cruising altitude. But sometimes it’s something else: Burnout.

It’s not lost on me that this AI explosion is arriving in an era where many people are still metabolizing the long tail of COVID. There’s a delayed exhaustion moving through workplaces — a quiet, pervasive fatigue that makes people look at their jobs and think:

I can’t do this the same way for another decade or more.

And so there’s a growing cohort of Gen X professionals saying under their breath:

You know what? Screw it. I’m burned out anyway, and change is coming.

This generation senses to go not where the ball is, but where the ball WILL be.

3) Their personal lives may finally be giving them some air.

Another pattern I’m noticing: many of the early adopters I’m coaching have survived the all-hands-on-deck years of raising a young family while juggling a professional career. They now have older children, teens or young adults. Their lives have slightly more margin.

Gen X has often felt like a forgotten generation, squeezed between generations with more colourful war stories. But right now, there’s a very particular alignment happening: enough experience to see the opportunity, enough autonomy to act, and enough life-space to actually learn.

4) There is no “Harvard degree” for AI right now.

AI is moving too quickly.

A formal curriculum can’t keep up with week-by-week change. And so, this moment rewards the self-made: those willing to learn from informal tutorials, from experimentation, from messing around and finding out.

It’s a gold rush. And Gen X, perhaps because they’ve lived through more than one economic era and more than one technological shift, is not waiting for permission. They’ve already survived enough storms to face this new one with less catastrophizing and more curiosity. They are picking up the pickaxes and heading out.

Even more beautifully: they’re using AI to learn AI.

And it is wild to watch people who were never formally trained in coding generate complex code, prototype apps, create workflows, automate operations — things that would have required a dozen-person team, a mere 6 months ago.

The Fear Exists Too: Layoffs, Ageism, and the “From Strength to Strength” Pivot:

I don’t want to romanticize this. There is real fear in the air.

I’m coaching many people who feel a looming threat of layoffs, especially in tech. And for those in their 40s and 50s, it’s not just about losing a job. It’s about whether the world still has a place for your expertise.

This is where I often think of the work of Arthur Brooks and his book From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life. He describes how certain cognitive functions can wane earlier than we expect. Like the fast “mental math” side of intelligence that made early-career coders such coveted whizz kids. Cognitive functions like calculation and “photographic” memory wane fast, sometimes even beginning in our 30s. And as we age, we’re invited (sometimes forced) to shift toward a different kind of intelligence: the “Crystallized” kind. Now of high value is the teacher, the mentor. The strategist, the person who connects the dots and sees around corners.

The AI era is a threat to the “Human Calculator”. And how fascinating is it that Gen X brains are weakening in their human calculator capacity, but strengthening in their power for deep synthesis. The AI era is a personalized invitation to the mid-life professional with Crystallized intelligence.

The Real Opportunity: A Renaissance, Not a Decline:

Gen X, sitting on decades of experience, has a kind of hidden advantage: they can become the leaders of hybrid teams of people and machines. They can become translators between departments. They can become the internal guide who helps others adopt AI thoughtfully. They can become the strategic thinker who understands not only the tool — but the human system the tool has to fit into.

Here’s how I see this playing out, in three broad paths:

Path 1: The in-house AI translator

Some people will stay in their current roles — in tech, finance, healthcare, operations, creative industries — and become internal AI experts. Not because they were tapped by leadership, but because they went up to leadership and appointed themselves.

And because every company is now racing to adopt AI fast enough to avoid being left behind, the value of a practical, self-taught AI translator with institutional knowledge… it’s enormous.

This could create a genuine renaissance for Gen X professionals approaching their later career decades: more variety, more influence, more challenge — and, frankly, more fun.

Path 2: The consultancy explosion

Others will face layoffs — or choose to leave — and build consultancies that help organizations adopt AI.

And I want to say something clearly: if you have decades of experience inside an industry, and you learn how AI can transform its workflows, you are sitting on a goldmine.

Because most industries are behind. Most leaders have only just woken up to the need to adopt, and they are behind the 8-ball. Tech teams in the past 6 months have been running around like firefighters, trying to make traction on scattered orders of a CEO/CTO caught in a late-stage scramble.

Gen X is showing up with the Superman “S” on their shirt, bringing the calm relief of cool water on the fire.

Within a year or two, I can easily imagine Gen X consultants building a lucrative and variety-filled portfolio of clients. They’ll be able to cherry-pick a mix of short- and long-term engagements, parachuting in to AI-upgrade and modernize company systems. This consulting niche will be the perfect lane for those who love being in the building phase of a project, but who dislike slogging it out in the endless maintenance plateau.

Path 3: The second life — passion projects with AI leverage

And then there are people who will leverage AI to build something that speaks to their creative passion.

Whether an app, a service, a project connected to agriculture, tourism, art, wellness — the barriers have now been lifted. AI doesn’t remove the need for human creativity. It just reduces the barriers to entry for the solo creator or entrepreneur. It reduces overhead and compresses timelines to launch. It allows you to wear many hats and gives your team-of-one the leverage of a team-of-fifteen (and growing).

Small businesses run by Gen X will flourish because this generation has a unique blend of bandwidth, experience, unchanneled interest and passion, and knack for quick adoption of fast-developing AI tools.

Gen X may not retire — Not Because They Can’t, But Because They Don’t Want To:
Some argue Gen X won’t have the same safety nets the Boomer generation had. Pensions are no longer guaranteed, and home ownership and asset wealth is not at the scale that Boomers have enjoyed.

But there’s another truth emerging: Gen X may live longer, and their days may be lived with greater health and function. So the old story of full-stop retirement at 65 may not fit the bodies and minds we’ll inhabit in our later decades.

I’ll write more about this soon, because it matters: the idea of “Unretiring,” or simply not retiring in the traditional sense. Not because you’re forced to work, but because you’ve found that Thing that makes you jump out of bed each morning, eager to contribute, well into your 70s and even 80s. The concept of ikigai — doing something that you love, that the world needs, that you can be paid for, and that you’re good at.

What if the AI era becomes the doorway into Gen X’s ikigai era?

A second professional life. A later-life reinvention.

A chapter where you don’t “slow down,” but instead you become the guru, the builder, the mentor, the strategic thinker — the one younger people seek out and ask:

How did you do it? How did you learn that? How did you change everything at 52?

And maybe the simplest reason Gen X is taking to AI so naturally is this:

They remember what it feels like to tinker.

They are still that 80’s kid.

And AI, in its current messy, experimental, fast-evolving form, is the kind of playground that rewards exactly that spirit.

If You’re Gen X and You Feel the Excitement, Follow It.
If you’re in your 40s or 50s and you’re resonating with what you’ve just read — I want to offer you this:

You’re right where you need to be. Point your feet downstream and go with the flow.

Follow your curiosity. Honor the part of you that is willing to be a beginner again.

Wake up every day with a commitment to learn something, build something new. Follow the rabbit trails of your own discovery, and go with the flow of learning.

Pick one tool and apply it to some manual process that you’d rather not be doing.

Use AI to learn AI.

To all the Gen X and older Millennials out there: This is your time. You are perfectly situated to prosper, to be sought out for your unique and valuable expertise, to make income on your own terms.

Something my Dad always tells me:

When you’re doing something you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.

Catch this wave, Gen X, because you are destined to contribute richly for the decades of productivity upcoming. And it won’t feel like work.

And if you’d like support in making sense of this moment — in turning your curiosity into a strategy, your tinkering into a new role or a new venture — that’s exactly the kind of client I love helping.

Get in touch with me. Let’s have a deep conversation about your big dream.