When Everyone Has a Genius

Introduction

What would you like to attempt?

Think of a project you’ve postponed because you lacked the time, a particular skill or someone who could help. It may be worth another look. Tools that help with research, design, writing and learning can make a first attempt less expensive or easier to fit into a working week.

That prospect is exciting, especially if the idea has been with you for years. It also raises a practical question: how much more do you want to take on? A household with a crowded calendar may welcome help finishing its existing work as much as the chance to begin something new.

This essay considers both possibilities through Mara and Ben, a fictional couple with a small business, a child and several plans they have yet to try. Their circumstances are illustrations, not customer case studies. The research cited throughout describes observed uses of AI and possible economic changes; the household story explores what those changes could mean in everyday life.

Chapter 01

At the kitchen table

Mara has opened the laptop to answer one question. Forty minutes later, she has seventeen tabs, a cold cup of tea and a much more sophisticated version of the question.

Mara runs a small repair business. Ben knows which bill is due on Friday, why the family changed an insurance arrangement and where the folder from the attorney probably is. Finding the current document will take a few minutes.

Imagine they have an assistant that can compare the documents, explain unfamiliar language and prepare a useful summary. It helps them work through the issue without having to reconstruct its entire history from memory.

Then Ben asks, “If this all got easier, what would you actually want to do?”

Mara wants to grow the business without being the answer to every question in it. Ben wants to run a Saturday workshop where people learn to repair things. He has been mentioning this workshop for six years, usually while repairing something for free. Both want a week in which dinner happens before everyone is too tired to enjoy it.

A capable assistant can help explore these wishes. It can compare options and make a first attempt less intimidating. But it cannot negotiate the household’s calendar on their behalf. Mara’s promising new project and Ben’s better Saturday may want the same hours.

They have different hopes for the time they could recover. For tonight, they want to understand those hopes before deciding how much more work to take on.

Chapter 02

What the research shows

There are good reasons to take the new possibilities seriously. In a study of 5,172 customer-support agents, Erik Brynjolfsson, Danielle Li and Lindsey Raymond found that access to a generative AI assistant increased issues resolved per hour by 15% on average. Less experienced workers benefited more. That is evidence from a particular workplace, not a promised increase in anyone’s income.[1]

A field experiment with Boston Consulting Group consultants found benefits on tasks within the system’s capabilities. It also described a “jagged technological frontier”: the boundary between what AI handles well and what it does not is uneven.[2] Being impressive at one task does not settle the next one.

Mara finds a small version of this problem in a beautifully organized comparison. One of the quotes is from last year. The arithmetic works. The comparison doesn’t.

She corrects the source and tries again. The revised comparison saves time, and she can check whether it is accurate. She begins using the tool on similar tasks, paying attention to mistakes as well as the work it handles well.

Being able to inspect a first draft gives Mara a reasonable way to try unfamiliar work. A small team can also use a cheaper experiment to learn whether an idea deserves more time or money.

The title of this essay imagines increasingly accessible intelligence. Access is uneven and systems make mistakes, so the practical starting point is work where the result can be checked. The studies offer reasons to experiment without establishing how every business or household will benefit.

Chapter 03

Reconsidering an old ambition

Ben has been thinking about teaching a repair workshop for six years. He knows how to help a person standing beside him. Preparing a class for people he has never met feels like a different undertaking.

He would need a lesson plan, clear illustrations, somewhere to teach and a way for people to book. He has put the idea aside several times because he could not see how to do that work alongside his existing commitments.

Suppose better tools now help him sketch a lesson, make clear illustrations and prepare a simple invitation. A friend can introduce him to a community space. The question changes from “How would I ever build this?” to “Would six people find one Saturday useful?” He still has to teach well. But he can find out sooner.

Peter Diamandis writes about approaching breakthroughs with curiosity: considering what improving tools, access to expertise and purposeful entrepreneurship could make possible.[7] Applied to Ben’s situation, that means checking whether the obstacles that stopped him a few years ago still apply.

The workshop is an imagined example. Ben would have to find out whether people want the class, whether he can teach it well and whether the costs make sense.

A conversation with the community-space organizer would help him answer some of those questions this week.

If you have an ambition you have set aside, consider what prevented you from pursuing it. Has a cost fallen? Is there a skill you can now learn with help? Do you know someone who could explain a part of the work that once seemed inaccessible?