At only 21 years old, Bermudian Kairo Morton has a dream job in California, working in artificial intelligence.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate’s tech background began here at home in Bermuda, as he admits to being somewhat of a self-starter.

Today, he is an AI researcher working for a tech start-up in San Francisco.

“The energy here for tech and Silicon Valley is just so heavy,” Mr Morton said. “There are many tech start-ups in the area.”

He does have pragmatic counsel for those concerned about the AI revolution in the workplace: not all changes will come at the same time.

He says that the future will mean that artificial intelligence will replace some office jobs. But he smiles as he explains how it will take a lot longer for AI to figure out how to unclog the toilet or rewire the house.

Mr Morton said: “The dexterity and understanding of a problem that you need for something like plumbing and electrical work is so complex from a systems design standpoint. But AI will become effective in those fields much later.”

He thought AI would at first dominate in an office setting, or anything operating in the digital sphere. Even jobs such as his own in research and coding could eventually be on the chopping block, thanks to AI.

“It depends on what type of programming you are doing, but yeah, a lot of the more simple programming for sure will be done by AI,” he said. “I would not be surprised if AI took over a lot of it.”

At the moment though, he is more excited than worried by AI’s possibilities.

“AI is supercharging what I can do in terms of programming,” he said. “At my job, AI lets us code ten times faster. I often let AI write a snippet of code, read over it to make sure it is good, and then use it. It speeds up the process.”

Mr Morton graduated last year from MIT with a bachelor of science in AI.

He first gained a programming foundation while studying robotics in primary school at Somersfield Academy in Devonshire. His interest in AI came after transferring to a boarding school overseas in secondary school.

“At that point, I had been coding at home for a while,” he said. “I was teaching myself a lot of stuff.”

At MIT, he became involved in the Scene Representation Group, an AI lab looking at 3D image representation.

Mr Morton started applying for tech jobs in his senior year of university.

He said: “I was applying to Google, Apple, Tesla and other places for AI roles,” he said.

But while he was doing this, Backflip, based in San Francisco, was recruiting on campus.

It was founded by the inventors of 3D-printed carbon fibre, tech specialists who founded Markforged and took it public for $2.1 billion.

Markforged is a company that designs, develops and manufactures The Digital Forge — an industrial platform of 3D printers, software and materials that enables manufacturers to print parts on demand.

It produced the first 3D printers capable of printing continuous carbon fibre reinforcement and utilises a cloud architecture.

A representative from the latest venture, Backflip, found Mr Morton researching 3D AI and invited him to what began as a simple coffee conversation.

The San Francisco firm takes any image or text and turns it into a 3D object that can be made with a 3D printer, or used as a game asset, among other things. The principals aim to become the fastest makers of any 3D part.

Applying for a job there, Mr Morton had to go through a tough application process. First they interviewed him to see if he had the right personality for the company. Then he had to run a gauntlet of technical interviews, four hours in total. As part of the test, he had to write code for a series of questions while the interviewer looked on.

“I was a little nervous, but I had a good sense of the kinds of questions they were going to ask me,” he said. “You can buy books that help you prepare for coding interviews with big companies.

“However, Backflip was giving me a much more diverse set of problems. I relied on the experience I had, and the things I was doing in the lab at MIT.”

He is now enjoying living in San Francisco.