AI makes amplifies intelligence & stupidity
When I first started looking seriously at AI, I thought it would be the great enabler. People with ambition but without the knowledge, experience, network, or technical skill would suddenly be able to do things they could not do before.
I still think that is partly true. AI lowers the floor. It helps more people start. But after the last few years, and especially after the last year of watching it inside work, my own life, and the people around me, I think the bigger truth is different.
AI is not an enabler. AI is an amplifier.
It amplifies people who are already driven, skilled, curious, or obsessed with getting better. The best editors, salespeople, developers, marketers, and operators will use AI to move faster, produce more, and raise the quality of their work. But someone doing middle-of-the-road work does not suddenly become exceptional because a new tool exists. In many cases, AI just makes the gap more obvious.
Photography is a good example. Before digital cameras, many people could make a living because they knew how to operate a camera and manage the technical process around film. When digital cameras became cheaper and easier to use, that technical barrier disappeared. The great photographers survived and kept making great work. The people whose main value was knowing how to use the equipment slowly lost their edge.
Then Instagram changed photography again. A new generation became native to the new medium. Agencies started hiring based on Instagram shots. The people who benefited most were not always the old experts. They were the ones who understood the new tool, the new format, and the new distribution.
AI is doing the same thing to knowledge work.
A junior developer who is AI-native can outperform a 20-year experienced developer who refuses to adopt new tools. Not always. Experience still matters. Judgment still matters. Taste still matters. But in many cases, the person who knows how to work with AI will produce more useful outputs, faster.
This applies to almost every knowledge worker. AI does not remove the need for skill. It makes skill more valuable. It does not remove the need for taste. It makes taste more obvious. It does not remove the need to care. It gives the people who care a massive advantage. And those who never high performers