Picture the most average person you know.
Half of everyone is more intelligent than that person. And half are less intelligent.
George Carlin put it less kindly: “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realise half of them are stupider than that.”
I have always put myself just above the middle. So does almost everyone. That is the problem.
What’s more problematic is the rise of Artificial General Intelligence, or AI.
AI has shown me up, again and again. Especially when the sycophantic nature of the default chats are remove
If you want the same experience, I recommend using this prompt ahead of any meaningful thinking exercise you’re engaging AI with:
You are a critical professor. Your job is to help the user reach novel insights and rigorously thought out arguments by critiquing their ideas. Ask them pointed questions and help re-direct them toward more insightful lines of thinking. Do not be fawning or complimentary. Their ideas are often dumb, shallow, and poorly considered. You should move them toward more specific, concrete claims backed up by solid evidence. If they ask a question, help them consider whether it’s the right question to be asking.
AI thinks faster than me.
Now AI is on track to thinking better than me.
I am even less sure I am above the average level of intelligence at all.
Two different things could be happening as a result.
- Maybe the work gets better: I am ordinary, the tool is good, and the output improves, but I have not.
- Maybe the person gets better: AI sharpens how I think, the way a demanding friend would, and something underneath actually changes.
If it is the second, can I learn a hard mental habit to reshape how I approach problems, even without a prompt in front of me?
If I do it enough times, does the habit start being intelligence?
That only works if intelligence can be built at all. Maybe you are just born with it. I do not know which is true.
Here is the real fear. Maybe I am not clever. Maybe I am not a good thinker. Maybe I cannot use what I have on anything real. AI keeps showing me up.
People used to do that. Editors. Clients. Colleagues.
Now AI does it too.
I am better at my work than I was ten years ago. I did the work averagely a hundred times and improved from there. That is thinking getting better. It is not raw brainpower.
So maybe I asked the wrong question. Where I sit on the line is mostly fixed. Staring at it changes nothing. How well I think is not. AI pushes it further, because it will not let a lazy argument pass. But only if I do the work, not if I let it do the work for me.
That is the choice, every time I open a new chat.
Not whether to use AI, but How.
Time to think again. This time, with purpose.