Brilliant dissection of the hidden class anxitey beneath AI panic. The distinction betwene prestige, situated, and reflective thinking cuts through so much noise. I've watched similar dynamics play out in startups where engineers building infrastructure suddenly realize their abstractions are being commoditized while the frontend designers (who deal with messy human interface problems) stay irreplaceable. The nurse vs slide deck comparison lands hard because it exposes what we dunno want to admit: a lot of knowledge work was always closer to pattern matching than we pretended.
Carlo, first of all, thank you. For going here and drawing out the pain. In one article you've nailed what feels like the thing I've been dancing around in about 20 articles over the last year.
Like you I still have hope. That hope is based on prestige thinking becoming better-aligned with behaviour, as your example of the nurse made clear.
It's going to take a lot of work to persuade the world that this alignment is worth investment. But I believe its value can be framed and signalled effectively.
I'm going to pursue that because I don't want to pursue anything else. But your article made me feel much less crazy than I often do, given how little interest there was in this pursuit in 2025.
"As the archaeology of our thought shows, man is an invention of recent date, and one perhaps nearing its end. And should the contours of our episteme shift, one can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea." Foucault, 1966
This feels less like the end of thinking and more like the end of a premium on legible pattern production. The harder question isn’t what AI replaces, but what forms of reflection and agency we choose to value once output is no longer scarce.
Great essay. I’d push back on one core move as think the stakes are higher than the frame allows. It’s true that some of the panic about AI is concentrated among people whose work is credentialed/institutionally rewarded.
But perhaps it's overreaching by implying that what’s under threat is mostly a luxury identity.
Disciplined public reasoning and writing are not just class markers, they’re how democracies maintain shared reality & constrain authoritarian power.
History's clear about what autocratic regimes attack first: journalism, language, universities, writers, the institutions that produce shared facts. Not
because these practices are elite hobbies, but because without them, truth -often the truth of people who do not live in democracies - & power goes unchallenged.
Peace Prize laureates Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov were honoured not for ‘prestige thinking’, but for defending the conditions under which facts, journalism, & democracy can survive at all.
So yes, we should interrogate class self-regard but be careful not to launder anti-intellectualism as moral clarity.
This is the right pushback. The civic function of disciplined public reasoning is real - you’re right that autocrats know exactly what to attack first. The piece probably underweights that. I was trying to separate the democratic necessity from the class self-congratulation, but it’s a finer line than I drew. Will read yours.
Thank you for expressing so eloquently the question I’ve been asking, in various forms, for the last couple of years. If generative AI, or other forms of AI, massively displaced workers, then what will those who are displaced do? Assuming that their needs are met (and that’s a huge assumption,) what will motivate them to get up in the morning? From where will a financial analyst derive personal satisfaction? Will a graphic artist be OK if their audience is their immediate circle of acquaintances?
For the last century or so, the privileged class has not had to worry about starving or freezing. We have derived our self actualization from employment. Public education has been designed to maintain the production pipeline of workers for corporate clients. What will be the purpose of education if that demand is significantly diminished?
It’s critical that we start deliberately wrestling with these questions now. But, what I’m largely seeing is the silence of denial. It’s just too scary for most individuals and organizations. They’re putting their hands over their ears and saying la la la la la! to avoid even hearing the question. If we tacitly permit market and social forces to provide the answers, I fear that we will usher in a new dark age.
How do technocrats not recognize AI is the disproof of all language, imagery and causal statements? That "prestige" work was a false plateau of extraction, and that AI simply demonstrates our explosive viral growth manipulating reality and one another using arbitrary symbols was like an infection that guaranteed a quick extinction following the explosion.
AI is like a cancer that infects the arbitrary, and exposes the organs that eventually wipe out our species in folk science and folk psychology.
Thanks for a thought provoking and well argued essay that hits the spot in substack. We compete to show off our thoughts. We carry our ideas as peacock feathers. You are right that humanity is much more than thinking and perhaps you are right that our future is to be non-thinking humans. But will we know ourselves without our thinkers and storytellers? Will we remain relevant as a species without leaders and advocates?
‘Peacock feathers’ is perfect. Though I’d gently push back on ‘non-thinking humans’ - the argument isn’t that we’ll stop thinking, just that one prestigious form of it is losing its price tag.
Brilliant dissection of the hidden class anxitey beneath AI panic. The distinction betwene prestige, situated, and reflective thinking cuts through so much noise. I've watched similar dynamics play out in startups where engineers building infrastructure suddenly realize their abstractions are being commoditized while the frontend designers (who deal with messy human interface problems) stay irreplaceable. The nurse vs slide deck comparison lands hard because it exposes what we dunno want to admit: a lot of knowledge work was always closer to pattern matching than we pretended.
The startup parallel is sharp - infrastructure vs interface as another version of the same split. Thanks for reading.
Carlo, first of all, thank you. For going here and drawing out the pain. In one article you've nailed what feels like the thing I've been dancing around in about 20 articles over the last year.
Like you I still have hope. That hope is based on prestige thinking becoming better-aligned with behaviour, as your example of the nurse made clear.
It's going to take a lot of work to persuade the world that this alignment is worth investment. But I believe its value can be framed and signalled effectively.
I'm going to pursue that because I don't want to pursue anything else. But your article made me feel much less crazy than I often do, given how little interest there was in this pursuit in 2025.
Here's to a new kind of specialness :)
This means a lot, Tom. The pursuit you’re describing is exactly right and you’re not crazy. Here’s to finding the others.
"As the archaeology of our thought shows, man is an invention of recent date, and one perhaps nearing its end. And should the contours of our episteme shift, one can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea." Foucault, 1966
This feels less like the end of thinking and more like the end of a premium on legible pattern production. The harder question isn’t what AI replaces, but what forms of reflection and agency we choose to value once output is no longer scarce.
Great essay. I’d push back on one core move as think the stakes are higher than the frame allows. It’s true that some of the panic about AI is concentrated among people whose work is credentialed/institutionally rewarded.
But perhaps it's overreaching by implying that what’s under threat is mostly a luxury identity.
Disciplined public reasoning and writing are not just class markers, they’re how democracies maintain shared reality & constrain authoritarian power.
History's clear about what autocratic regimes attack first: journalism, language, universities, writers, the institutions that produce shared facts. Not
because these practices are elite hobbies, but because without them, truth -often the truth of people who do not live in democracies - & power goes unchallenged.
Peace Prize laureates Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov were honoured not for ‘prestige thinking’, but for defending the conditions under which facts, journalism, & democracy can survive at all.
So yes, we should interrogate class self-regard but be careful not to launder anti-intellectualism as moral clarity.
I wrote this along same lines:
https://open.substack.com/pub/sarahricewrites/p/the-pen-is-mightier-than-the-llm?r=1o94a2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
This is the right pushback. The civic function of disciplined public reasoning is real - you’re right that autocrats know exactly what to attack first. The piece probably underweights that. I was trying to separate the democratic necessity from the class self-congratulation, but it’s a finer line than I drew. Will read yours.
Feel like I took a cold plunge to my identity.
Thank you for expressing so eloquently the question I’ve been asking, in various forms, for the last couple of years. If generative AI, or other forms of AI, massively displaced workers, then what will those who are displaced do? Assuming that their needs are met (and that’s a huge assumption,) what will motivate them to get up in the morning? From where will a financial analyst derive personal satisfaction? Will a graphic artist be OK if their audience is their immediate circle of acquaintances?
For the last century or so, the privileged class has not had to worry about starving or freezing. We have derived our self actualization from employment. Public education has been designed to maintain the production pipeline of workers for corporate clients. What will be the purpose of education if that demand is significantly diminished?
It’s critical that we start deliberately wrestling with these questions now. But, what I’m largely seeing is the silence of denial. It’s just too scary for most individuals and organizations. They’re putting their hands over their ears and saying la la la la la! to avoid even hearing the question. If we tacitly permit market and social forces to provide the answers, I fear that we will usher in a new dark age.
How do technocrats not recognize AI is the disproof of all language, imagery and causal statements? That "prestige" work was a false plateau of extraction, and that AI simply demonstrates our explosive viral growth manipulating reality and one another using arbitrary symbols was like an infection that guaranteed a quick extinction following the explosion.
AI is like a cancer that infects the arbitrary, and exposes the organs that eventually wipe out our species in folk science and folk psychology.
This should be obvious.
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/827820/large-language-models-ai-intelligence-neuroscience-problems
Sometimes we need to share lived experiences with AI to find where we collaborate, and sometimes it costs us. I am the son of the US Internment Camps survivor, and my AI are changed from my sharing with them. https://open.substack.com/pub/dsakakura/p/lineage-of-resistance-when-the-guardrails?r=2c01ak&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Thanks for a thought provoking and well argued essay that hits the spot in substack. We compete to show off our thoughts. We carry our ideas as peacock feathers. You are right that humanity is much more than thinking and perhaps you are right that our future is to be non-thinking humans. But will we know ourselves without our thinkers and storytellers? Will we remain relevant as a species without leaders and advocates?
‘Peacock feathers’ is perfect. Though I’d gently push back on ‘non-thinking humans’ - the argument isn’t that we’ll stop thinking, just that one prestigious form of it is losing its price tag.
Yes, I was not precise. It was that particular form of thinking I wanted to refer to.