There was once talk about AI as a leveler. I’m not sure how common that claim is anymore, but I’ve always thought it was off the mark. (I recently heard the idea parroted on some podcasts lately prompting me to write this.)
Think of intelligence in two forms: “raw” and “cooked.” Raw intelligence is what an AI model embodies, sheer pattern recognition at scale. Cooked intelligence, however, is different. It’s the lived context, the subtle navigation of a messy world.
AI struggles with that second kind. It doesn’t arrive with context baked in. Over time, context can be layered on, through careful prompt design, by building agents, or by extending memory systems (the kind I’m certain Meta is betting on, and OpenAI is aggressively implementing). Even then, the problem isn’t solved.
Because context is only half the story. What about the quality of your questions? What about the blind spots (what you don’t know that you don’t know?) Those edges define the limits of any intelligence, human or machine. And they’re exactly where the myth of AI as a leveler collapses.
There’s another dimension to this. It’s true that in many domains of knowledge work — particularly in task-centric contexts — the gap between expert and beginner has narrowed, and will continue to be. Yet one could also speak of a “greener field” hypothesis, where precisely because everyone has gotten a leg up, the advanced knowledge worker now holds the magic wand, the ability to do what was previously unthinkable (my go to analogy here is often the parable of the talents in the gospels).
But the real fracture appears on the economic front (which flows directly from the prior argument). This is where the “leveler” myth truly shatters.
AI is less a leveler and more a lever, dramatically amplifying the force of those who already know where to push (capital, know-how, etc.). The technology creates a dynamic where markets disproportionately reward those with sophisticated direction (and those who invest in them.)
A small class will thus guide AI toward novel, high-value creation, effectively setting the agenda for entire industries. The majority will find themselves executing more commoditized tasks, using powerful tools they don’t control, to fulfill objectives set by others.
This hierarchy will become self-reinforcing, as leading players reinvest their outsized gains into better models and proprietary data, solidifying their advantage and making the upper rungs of the economic ladder increasingly hard to reach.
There is precedent for this, of course, as such, I am unsure if many people, or anyone for that matter, would disagree with what we all think is coming.