There is a widespread feeling that artificial intelligence marks a historic turning point. And it does.
But the most important question is not how powerful AI is, but who it serves.
In the 1980s, the personal computer was born from a radical idea: putting computational power into the hands of individuals. That vision became a cultural manifesto through Steve Jobs and his famous slogan: Think Different.
With AI, it feels as though that paradigm is quietly being reversed.

From human beings to consumers

Today’s society increasingly recognizes people as consumers rather than individuals.
Not for their uniqueness, but for their average, predictable, and monetizable behavior.
In this context, the average becomes the norm, predictability becomes value, and exception becomes noise. That is exactly where AI fits perfectly.

AI as a machine of the average

Artificial intelligence models do not seek truth or radical novelty. They seek what is probable, plausible, and statistically consistent.
AI works because it reduces variance. From a market perspective, variance is a problem.
Genius, by definition, breaks patterns, anticipates what does not yet exist, and destabilizes established models.
Economically speaking, genius is a statistical anomaly. And anomalies distort the market.

Encyclopedia Britannica never replaced intellectuals

There is a revealing historical parallel.
Having access to the Encyclopedia Britannica never meant 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 retrieving and synthesizing knowledge. Thinking, however, is something else: judgment, risk, interpretation, and responsibility.

The Apple paradox

The personal computer was, first and foremost, a cultural act—not just a technical one. It was designed 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, and ideas that are merely “good enough.”
This is not a deliberate betrayal—it is the natural outcome of a mature market that prefers stability over asymmetry. Still, it is difficult 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 at a systemic level.
And that is the real risk: not a technology that thinks for us, but a society that stops recognizing the value of what is uncomfortable, inefficient, and impossible to scale.

The Real Question About AI

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.
Genius has never existed to optimize markets. It has always challenged them.
And maybe that is exactly why we still need it.