I'm a Truck Driver. I Built an AI Tool. Here's How It Happened.

My name is Zhao Kefei. I'm 41 years old. I've been driving freight trucks for 22 years.

I have no coding background. No design skills. No marketing experience. I grew up in rural Henan, China, and spent most of my adult life behind the wheel of a truck, moving cargo from one city to another.

This is not a story about a tech prodigy. This is a story about a problem I couldn't stop thinking about.

The Injury That Changed Everything

Last year I fractured a bone in my foot.

I kept driving. My family needed the income, and stopping wasn't something I could afford to do. But the pain wore me down in a way that's hard to describe — not just physically, but mentally. Lying in the cab at night, foot throbbing, I started asking myself a question I'd been avoiding for years:

How many more years can I actually do this?

Truck driving is physical work. My body won't do it forever. I have two kids. I have responsibilities. And for the first time, I sat still long enough to admit that I needed another path.

Finding AI — Not as a Trend, but as a Lifeline

I'd heard about AI tools. Everyone had. But during my recovery, I actually started using them — seriously, obsessively, the way you use something when you feel like your future depends on it.

The problem was access. Most of the tools I wanted to try were blocked in China. So I spent two sleepless days figuring out how to set up a VPN server. I'd never done anything like that before. I worked lying on the floor because my back hurt too much to sit at a desk.

I got it working. Then I started using Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek — sometimes all of them in the same session, asking the same question to each one, comparing the answers.

That habit — asking multiple AIs the same question — started as paranoia. I didn't trust any single answer enough to act on it. But over time I realized it wasn't paranoia. It was the right way to use these tools.

The Problem That Built AI Roundtable

The manual process was exhausting. Four browser tabs. Four conversations. Copy the question, paste it four times, read four responses, try to hold the differences in my head simultaneously.

But the results were worth it. The disagreements between models were often more valuable than any single answer. When Claude flagged a risk that GPT-4o had missed, that gap told me something. When DeepSeek said "just do it" and Gemini said "wait, have you considered—", that tension was exactly the information I needed.

I wanted a tool that did this automatically. One input. Four minds. The agreements and disagreements surfaced clearly, without me managing four tabs.

I didn't know how to build software. So I described what I wanted, in plain language, to an AI — and asked it to help me build it.

It took many iterations. Many late nights. Many versions that didn't work. The first version that ran properly, I sat and stared at it for a long time.

I had built something.

What AI Roundtable Actually Is

It's not magic. It's a simple idea executed carefully: send one question to four leading AI models simultaneously, then present the responses in a way that makes the agreements and disagreements visible.

Claude acts as the risk auditor — cautious, thorough, focused on what could go wrong.

Gemini plays devil's advocate — challenges assumptions, looks for the angle everyone else missed.

DeepSeek is the execution engineer — direct, practical, focused on what to actually do.

GPT-4o is the architect — synthesizes everything and gives you the big picture.

Together, they cover blind spots that any single model would miss.

Why I Built the Desktop Version

Privacy matters. When you paste sensitive information into a cloud-based AI, that data leaves your machine. For personal decisions — financial, medical, business — that's worth thinking about.

The desktop version of AI Roundtable runs on Windows. Your sessions stay on your device. Nothing is stored on external servers beyond what the API requires.

I built it for myself first, because I was making real decisions with these tools and I wanted to know my thinking process was staying private.

The First Thing I Ever Earned From Building Software

My first paid job in tech was setting up a server for someone. I earned 70 RMB — about $10. I spent more on server fees than I made.

I didn't care. Something had shifted. I had gone from a truck driver lying on the floor trying to set up a VPN to someone who could build tools and help other people with them.

That's not nothing. That's everything.

If This Helps You Too

I built AI Roundtable because I needed it. Because I was making decisions that mattered — about my career, my family, my future — and I didn't trust any single AI enough to act on its advice alone.

If you're using AI for decisions that actually matter to you, you shouldn't trust a single source either.

That's the whole idea.

Zhao Kefei. Truck driver. Builder. Father of two.