I’ve been thinking about something that’s chilling and it no longer feels theoretical.
Every diamond ever designed, every building ever engineered, every book ever written, every legal argument ever constructed, every surgical procedure ever refined—all of it will soon be done better by artificial intelligence.
Not just faster.
Better.
More precise.
Less error.
More optimized.
It could even write this post better than me!! or better than the master writers of our day.
We are approaching what many researchers like Mo Gawdat call an “intelligence explosion.” The phrase sounds abstract, but the idea is simple and unsettling.
He argues that once a machine becomes better than humans at the task of designing smarter machines, improvement no longer moves at a human pace. Intelligence begins to feed on itself. Each improvement enables the next—faster than we can track, regulate, or meaningfully understand. What took decades becomes years. What took years becomes weeks.
At that point, intelligence stops being something earned through struggle, formation, and wisdom. It becomes cheap, abundant, and external.
And that changes everything.
Because it will not stop at spreadsheets or search engines.
Not at code.
Not at art.
Not at medicine.
AI is not only learning to do things better than us. It is learning to train itself, to examine its own internal systems, correct its own weaknesses, and refine its own processes. Intelligence regulating intelligence. Optimization optimizing optimization. A closed loop of self-improvement that does not get tired, discouraged, bored, or afraid.
It will not stop.
That alone should give us pause.
Because for most of human history, intelligence has been our crown jewel. It was foundational for the enlightenment. So when Descartes said, “I think therefore I am,” he said was arguing what set’s us apart from everything else. Oh how wrong he was !
But what happens when intelligence is not ours alone?
It means Philosophy becomes even more important because it makes us really distinguish the importance between intelligence & wisdom.
A machine may outthink you, but it cannot tell you what is worth thinking about. Meaning does not emerge from computation. It emerges from commitment, from answering the question, What is worth my life?
I once had a student or rather, a young woman I knew well—say something to me that stuck. She dismissed humanities courses, especially ethics, as “fluff classes.” In her mind, the only thing that mattered was how much money a class could help her make. If it didn’t directly increase earning potential, it was unnecessary.
What struck me wasn’t her ambition. It was how completely she had absorbed the performance mentality—the idea that human value is measured by output, efficiency, and economic return. She wasn’t being cruel. She was being consistent with what our culture has been teaching her.
And yet, that way of thinking is precisely what becomes hollow in an age of intelligent machines.
If fulfillment and worth come from performance, what happens when machines outperform us? And they have and they will.
This means our children will need something deeper than résumé building or a 401k. They will need formation in character, resilience, self-command, truthfulness, and love. Homes will matter more, not less, because identity cannot be outsourced to algorithms without hollowing out the soul. This cannot be done by an AI algorithmic system.
It can only be done by living real life.
Thus the endgame of AI and technological mastery may not be not the victory of science, but the diminishing of man