The entire intellectual economy has been organized around the assumption that intelligence is expensive to produce and therefore must be carefully rationed. Education, professional expertise, research, consulting, software development, and knowledge work more generally are all shaped by the high cost of cognitive production.

AI is rapidly undermining that assumption.

We are moving toward a world in which an ordinary person can command quantities and varieties of intelligence that would previously have required teams of highly trained specialists. Just as I can enjoy food without knowing how to farm, I can increasingly enjoy the products of intelligence without knowing how to produce them myself.

The crucial economic question then becomes not how much intelligence people can produce, but how much intelligence they can find uses for.

And there is no obvious upper bound on that demand.

— “Cognitive Mercantilism,” Contraptions