{"id":4726,"date":"2025-09-04T21:57:43","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T21:57:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/?p=4726"},"modified":"2025-09-04T21:57:43","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T21:57:43","slug":"what-happens-if-ai-actually-makes-us-all-smarter-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/?p=4726","title":{"rendered":"What Happens If AI Actually Makes Us All Smarter?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Affirm CEO Max Levchin says artificial intelligence is boosting humanity\u2019s brainpower. Speaking on TBPN last Friday<\/a>, the PayPal mafia alum argued that AI is effectively raising the universe\u2019s average IQ<\/a> \u2014 or at least the IQ of anyone online.<\/p>\n

This tracks with what\u00a0Ethan Mollick just wrote about \u201cmass intelligence,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0or the idea that nearly a billion people now have access to near-genius-level AI models.<\/p>\n

Say what you will about economic bubbles or whether AI makes us lazy, but one thing\u2019s undeniable: These tools are dramatically raising the floor of what average users can accomplish.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s where it gets wild<\/h2>\n

This might solve one of humanity\u2019s oldest problems.<\/p>\n

Ever notice how every major platform eventually turns to garbage? Google drowning in SEO spam; Airbnb becoming a minefield of fees; social media optimizing for outrage?<\/p>\n

12 Grams of Carbon<\/a>\u00a0recently wrote about the newly coined (and\u00a0highly scientific)\u00a0<\/em>term for this phenomena:\u201censhittification\u201d \u2014 and how it works<\/a>.<\/p>\n

See, services getting worse over time is not just the platforms\u2019 fault, but ours as users, too. We\u2019re all stuck in a prisoner\u2019s dilemma where competitive incentives force everyone\u2014 platforms and users alike \u2014 to make choices that destroy value over time.<\/p>\n

Back in 2014,\u00a0Scott Alexander called this force \u201cMoloch\u201d <\/a>\u2014 the demon of competition that makes us sacrifice everything good on the altar of staying competitive, and how it\u2019s actually plagued us for as long as humans have been around (long before the internet or ChatGPT slop).<\/em><\/p>\n

His proposed solution at the time? Only a benevolent artificial superintelligence could coordinate humanity out of this mess. (Ironically, he later co-authored\u00a0AI 2027<\/a>, predicting that the race to build that very superintelligence might destroy us all. Whoops.)<\/p>\n

Well, the conventional wisdom says AI is about to make Moloch \u2014 or \u201censhittification\u201d \u2014 exponentially worse: more spam, more manipulation, more races to the bottom.<\/p>\n

But what if we\u2019re thinking about this backward? <\/strong>Let\u2019s revisit Max\u2019s point: What if AI is actually raising humanity\u2019s average IQ? Not through some sci-fi brain implant, but by making everyone who touches these tools dramatically smarter at navigating the world.<\/p>\n

Max\u2019s point was simple but profound.<\/strong>\u00a0When AI helps us evaluate products in real-time, bad actors can\u2019t hide behind complexity anymore. His example: AI-powered search helps people understand that Affirm\u2019s transparent loans actually cost less than credit cards with compound interest traps.<\/p>\n

Now multiply this by every decision we make daily:<\/p>\n

Google\u2019s SEO slop problem?<\/strong> Now your AI assistant pre-filters search results, giving you just the information you ask for. Suddenly, spending millions on SEO manipulation becomes pointless \u2014 only genuine value surfaces.<\/p>\n

Airbnb\u2019s bait-and-switch economy?<\/strong>\u00a0Your AI agent spots patterns across thousands of reviews, calculates real total costs including those \u201csurprise\u201d cleaning fees, and warns you about hosts who mysteriously always find \u201cdamage.\u201d The scammers lose their camouflage.<\/p>\n

AI-generated slop flooding your feeds?<\/strong> As AI assistants get better at detecting synthetic content, they can flag it before it wastes your time. And the attention economy\u2019s race to the bottom hits a wall when fake engagement can\u2019t fool anyone anymore.<\/p>\n

You can basically call this the \u201cunshittification\u201d hypothesis!<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the catch<\/h2>\n

This only works if AI can reliably distinguish truth from fiction, and if humans keep creating genuinely valuable products, content, and services. Otherwise, we\u2019re just automating \u2014 and accelerating \u2014 Moloch\u2019s race to the bottom.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the thing \u2014 we don\u2019t need perfect detection. We just need to raise the cost of deception high enough that creating value becomes more profitable than gaming the system.<\/p>\n

This is exactly what\u00a0Meta\u2019s betting $72 billion on<\/a>: so called \u201dpersonal superintelligence\u201d that helps you navigate life better. Though ironically, if we all get smart enough to stop doomscrolling,\u00a0Meta\u2019s current business model evaporates.<\/em><\/p>\n

Now apply this to education<\/h2>\n

Joe Liemandt and MacKenzie Price at Alpha School<\/a> aren\u2019t waiting for superintelligence. Their AI tutor helps kids master entire grade levels in only 20-30 hours right now. The results are almost unbelievable.<\/p>\n

High schoolers who loved learning so much they canceled summer break.<\/p>\n

A student jumping 50 SAT points after AI identified she needed third-grade multiplication practice.<\/p>\n

Liemandt predicts that within 5-10 years, a sub-$1K tablet will teach any child everything they need academically in two hours daily.<\/p>\n

The rest of their day? Building real businesses, developing actual skills, becoming genuinely capable humans (and Alpha School has a plan to take this national<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Now scale this up.<\/strong>\u00a0When a billion kids get 10x better at learning, they become adults who are 10x better at evaluating products, spotting scams, and creating valuable products and services. The\u00a0enshittification\u00a0cycle breaks because the marks get too clever to con.<\/p>\n

This might be AI\u2019s ultimate twist: Instead of building artificial general intelligence to govern us from above, we\u2019re scaling human general intelligence from below. Every kid who learns to think critically, evaluate evidence, and solve real problems becomes another node in humanity\u2019s distributed intelligence network \u2014 making us all better for it.<\/p>\n

So maybe we don\u2019t need a benevolent AI overlord to solve Moloch. We just need everyone informed enough to stop feeding the beast.<\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s note: This content originally ran in our sister publication, The Neuron<\/a>. To read more from The Neuron, <\/span>sign up for its newsletter here<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The post What Happens If AI Actually Makes Us All Smarter?<\/a> appeared first on eWEEK<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Affirm CEO Max Levchin says artificial intelligence is boosting humanity\u2019s brainpower. Speaking on TBPN last Friday, the PayPal mafia alum argued that AI is effectively raising the universe\u2019s average IQ \u2014 or at least the IQ of anyone online. This tracks with what\u00a0Ethan Mollick just wrote about \u201cmass intelligence,\u201d\u00a0or the idea that nearly a billion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4726"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4726\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}