Why be such an absolutist.
How about I caveat it the way you want:
AI equalizes intelligence in the sense that it closes the gap. Not perfectly, not infinitely, but directionally. The distribution compresses. The floor rises faster than the ceiling, so people who used to be far apart end up operating much closer together.
You can already see it in the Erdős example. The person who wrote that prompt wasn’t some random idiot. It took real cleverness to even set it up that way. But the fact that they could get that far, with assistance, is exactly the point. The distance between “amateur” and “expert” shrinks when the tool fills in large parts of the path.
Now extend that forward. Today it’s one clever person, one problem, one careful interaction. As the tooling improves, that same pattern scales. Better reasoning, better search, better guidance. The amount of lift the tool provides increases, which means the gap continues to narrow.
All the supposed “counterpoints” people bring up are already implied in the claim. “Equalize” here obviously means moving closer to equality. Is it NOT obvious that LLMs don't actually equalize intelligence to a level of 100%? Do I actually need to spell that out? If there was nothing at stake, I wouldn't need to.
But instead people latch onto the most absurd version possible, knock that down, and act like they’ve said something meaningful. It’s the same mindset as that guy demanding a formal paper or citation for an observation you can see unfolding in real time. Not because it’s unclear, but because engaging with the actual claim is uncomfortable. It’s easier to distort it into something extreme and dismiss it than to admit the gap is closing.
I’ll agree the top of the stack may have compressed downwards. But that leaves open the possibilities that (a) the ceiling has risen and (b) the floor isn’t really moving, inasmuch as productively engaging with any tool required baseline intelligence.
More pointedly, I don’t think anyone who opposes AI does so because they want to remain the smart kid in the room.
> If there was nothing at stake, I wouldn't need to
You’re on HN buddy. If you measure stakes by how pedantically you’re challenged, everything will rise to existential terms.
When i said stake, I meant HN is especially vulnerable because the stake is the HN communities identity as programmers. Consistently on HN you see articles on IQ voted up. People take pride in their intelligence and programming skills here... and AI is dismantling their identity piece by piece.
It's more then being the smart kid in the room. The future is pointing to a place where programming is just a one hour tutorial on how to tell AI to do it for you. What happens to you if you're entire identity and career was built on being a programmer as many people are here? THAT is what is at stake.