You could make a strong argument that the chief preoccupation with humanity over the past 200 years has been improving overall education.
It's worked. Despite all the morons you run into on the internet, the data is inarguable. IQ test score increases have been continuous and approximately linear from the earliest years of testing to the present. Maybe that's halting leaded gasoline and improving early-childhood education but IQ levels have steadily increased.
What if that's all about to end?
There was a wonderful demo this week from OpenAI on its GPT-4o model. One of the things it highlighted was how it could help tutor a student on math problems.
On the face of it, this should further improve education but I fear that's not what will happen. Picture thousands of kids with AI models effectively staring over their shoulders, badgering them along with problems like this.
The risk is that student say: What's the point? The AI has every answer so why do I need to learn it?
Already, there is a plague of Chat-GPT cheating in high schools and universities. The risk is that student say: What's the point?
If AI has every answer what would motivate kids to learn? Moreover, as parents and teachers see knowledge commoditized, will they stop caring. Already, there is a plague of Chat-GPT cheating in high schools and universities.
Ultimately, societies gravitate towards things that are useful and if we have super-intelligence in our pocket, people will start to ask: What's the point?
Now I would expect something like this to play out of many decades, so there's no real takeaways for markets. But it's an illustration that things we assume about the future -- even the most-basic things -- aren't always right. Even the past 20 years is notable. We assumed the internet would make everyone better-informed but instead it's put people into echo chambers and more-susceptible to propaganda.
Unintended consequences are a funny thing.