AI Could Make Everyone a Genius: Why We're Building Productivity Tools Instead
"AI won't replace you, but someone using AI will." You've heard it. LinkedIn is drowning in it. And while everyone repeats this line like profound wisdom, actual human beings are getting fired in bulk and replaced with chatbots that can barely handle a password reset.
The CEOs aren't waiting to see who "learns to use AI" best. They're just cutting costs. So let's stop pretending this is about individual empowerment and call it what it is: a way to make layoffs sound like a personal failing.
But here's what bothers me more than the dishonesty—it's the lack of imagination. While everyone argues about augmentation versus replacement, there's a third possibility we're barely touching: amplification. And that's where things get interesting.
The Star Trek Lesson: What Happens When Everyone Has Access to AI Amplification
In Star Trek: The Next Generation, everyone is a genius. Not superhero-genius, but competent-in-their-domain genius. If your job is tactical officer, you're the best tactical officer in the fleet. This isn't because they're a different species or biology has changed—there are more people than ever, presumably fewer resources per capita, and yet everyone operates at an elite level.
So what gives? The technology exists, but the real infrastructure might be in education. We know the single most effective intervention for human learning: one-to-one tutoring. Benjamin Bloom figured this out in 1984. Students with personal tutors perform two standard deviations better than students in traditional classrooms. Two sigma. That's the difference between average and exceptional.
The problem? One-to-one tutoring is the most expensive, least scalable thing we've ever invented. We've never been able to afford it for everyone. Until maybe now.
Amplification vs. Augmentation: Understanding the Difference
Here's the difference:
Augmentation is strapping a power tool to your hand. You're still you, just faster. More productive. Same tasks, same thinking, just more.
Amplification is becoming capable of things you genuinely couldn't do before. It's not about speed, it's about unlocking potential that was always there but never had the conditions to develop.
If everyone had access to a personal AI tutor from birth—not a chatbot that spits out generic answers, but something that knows them, adapts to them, challenges them, fills in their specific gaps—then yeah, you'd get a ship full of people operating at what looks like genius level. Not because they're superhuman. Because they were taught at a level most of us will never experience.
What a Real AI Amplification System Would Require
For AI to genuinely amplify human capability, we'd need:
1. Education that starts with the person, not the curriculum. Not "here's what everyone needs to know" but "here's what you need to develop your particular capability."
2. Work that values capability over productivity. If the goal is just "do more faster," amplification becomes exploitation. If the goal is "become more capable," it's transformative.
3. Access that doesn't create a permanent underclass. If AI amplification is only available to people who can afford it, we're not raising the floor, we're building a cliff.
The uncomfortable truth? We have the technology for amplification. We don't have the systems. And we might not have the will.
Beyond the Platitudes: What Humans Are Actually For
If everyone could operate at genius level in their domain, if the constraint wasn't capability but something else entirely, we'd need to figure out what that "something else" is.
My hunch? It's the stuff AI can't amplify. Judgment. Ethics. Creativity that comes from lived experience, not pattern matching. The ability to ask "should we?" instead of just "can we?"
But we won't get there by pretending that AI is a neutral tool that just makes everyone a little bit better. And we definitely won't get there by lying to people about replacement while their colleagues get fired in bulk.
If we want amplification instead of extraction, we need to be honest about what that requires. And we need to build systems that actually support it. Otherwise, we're just arguing about who gets to stay on the Titanic a little bit longer.
