The Industrial Revolution didn’t just replace our muscles with machines. It went on to combine those machines into vast manufacturing systems.
The movement was from (1) manpower to (2) individual industrial machines to (3) manufacturing plants (filled with combinatorial explosions of industrial machines working together).
The individual strongman digger, tree chopper, etc., could fool himself for a while as that first lone-machine stage was happening. But once the next stage hit, even he couldn’t fool himself. He was no longer … special.
The same two broad steps, but for thinking, appear to have hit us all within just a couple years of AI. First, individual AIs able to out-code most programmers. Many, though, could tell themselves they were still better. But quickly on its heels came teams of such agents — the manufacturing plants of brains — working together to fashion bespoke computational products.
Few thinkers remain who don’t see the writing on the wall. Thinking is becoming a commodity.
No one can accuse Mark of sugar-coating his message! Mark is one of the most original and fertile thinkers I've discovered. He deserves a far larger audience.