There is a widespread feeling when we talk about artificial intelligence: that we are witnessing a historic turning point. And we are.
But the most important question is not how powerful AI is, it is for whom it works, and in which direction.
In the 1980s, the personal computer was born from a radical idea: put computational power into the hands of the individual. That vision became a cultural manifesto with Steve Jobs and his famous slogan: Think Different.
With AI, it feels like that paradigm is quietly being reversed.
From human beings to consumers
In today’s society, what tends to be recognized is not the human being, but the consumer.
Not the individual in their uniqueness, but their average, predictable, monetizable behavior.
In this context:
- the average becomes the majority
- predictability becomes value
- exception becomes noise
And this is exactly where AI fits perfectly.
AI as a machine of the average
Artificial intelligence models do not seek truth, nor radical novelty.
They seek what is:
- probable
- plausible
- statistically coherent
AI works because it reduces variance. And from a market perspective, variance is a problem.
Genius, by definition:
- breaks patterns
- anticipates what does not yet exist
- destabilizes models
Economically speaking, genius is a statistical anomaly. And anomalies “distort the market”.
Encyclopaedia Britannica never replaced intellectuals
There is a revealing historical parallel.
Having access to the Encyclopaedia Britannica never meant that society no longer needed intellectuals. Likewise:
- access to AI does not mean thinking
- generating text does not mean understanding
- producing answers does not mean asking the right questions
AI excels at knowledge retrieval and synthesis. Thinking, however, is something else: judgment, risk, interpretation, responsibility.
The Apple paradox
The personal computer was, first of all, a cultural act, not just a technical one. It was meant to amplify differences, not normalize them. Today, the dominant use of AI seems to move in the opposite direction:
- intelligence as a service
- standardized creativity
- ideas that are “good enough for everyone”
This is not a deliberate betrayal — it is the natural outcome of a mature market, which prefers stability over asymmetry. Still, it is hard to deny that this logic runs against the spirit of Think Different.
From Think Different to Think Probable
What we are experiencing may be summed up like this:
- Think Different → celebrated exception
- Think Probable → optimizes the average
AI does not eliminate genius. It simply makes it unnecessary in systemic terms.
And this is the real risk:
not a technology that thinks for us, but a society that stops recognizing value in what is uncomfortable, inefficient, and unscalable.
Conclusion
Artificial intelligence is a mirror. It reflects the society that builds and deploys it.
- If we use it to normalize, it will normalize.
- If we use it to reassure, it will reassure.
The real question is not whether AI can think. It is whether we are still willing to defend thinking, especially when it is slow, disruptive, and economically inconvenient.
Because genius has never optimized the market. It has always put it in crisis.
And maybe that is exactly why we still need it.
Marco Nasta' Blog 