Recently I watched an interview from last year with OpenAI’s Sam Altman that was done by Wharton professor Adam Grant. In it, Altman suggested that “There will be a kind of ability we still really value, but it will not be raw, intellectual horsepower to the same degree,” suggesting that asking questions and relying on a machine to answer questions would become a more important skill.

Meanwhile, tech leaders like Musk, Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, and others suggest skipping college altogether or downplaying its importance.  

It amounts to terrible advice. And nothing could be further from the truth.

Either right now or even in the distant future.  

The Scary Anti-Intellectual Movement in the U.S.

One of the things that I’ve been watching over the last several decades in the United States is this crazy anti-intellectual movement that has been building steadily. First, it was fed by entertainment: “Ah, those dumb guys/girls are fun.”

At the time, it was innocent.

But over the years, it almost certainly had a debilitating effect on society. Indeed, if you consider the moral of a lot of the core Hollywood films, for example, in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, it was simple: Smart people were not really to be trusted, and they weren’t one of us.

Today, that’s basically the playbook and the theme fed by (primarily) conservatives, religious leaders, and now billionaires, who want you to rely increasingly on them spoon-feeding you the information that supports their causes or businesses, so you don’t have to “think for yourself.”   

Dumb people, after all, are easier to manipulate and control.

Don’t kid yourself. That’s what all this is about, after all. Control.

AI Gains Knowledge, While We Lose

And indeed, if you look at the data and evidence, AI is getting smarter, and we seem to be getting dumber.

The United States, according to a recent study, has experienced a measurable decline in adult literacy and numeracy (reasoning with numbers) and in handling information. As of 2023 (when the latest research was conducted), literacy declined 12 points to hit a low of 258. While numeracy declined 7 points to hit 249. Translation: 28 percent of U.S. adults had low literacy ability, and 34 percent had low numeracy ability.

That’s not great.

Further complicating the issue: Two-thirds of registered voters in the U.S. now say college isn’t worth the cost. Some of that, of course, is the fact that the cost of an education has exploded, and universities and states are certainly to blame for wanting to cash in or cash out, as it were. But a lot of this sentiment is fueled by this idea that knowledge doesn’t really matter.

What’s the Argument for Knowledge in the Age of Machines?

In one form or another, you’ve probably heard the following: Won’t a machine be equipped with everything you need to know in the future?

Well, let’s start with a simple example. Have you ever been on a date? And the person you went out with said something about a particular topic, but you didn’t have any reply, witty or otherwise, because you didn’t understand anything about what he or she was talking about. Maybe the date fizzled out after that.

Or maybe you went to a foreign country, and you couldn’t talk to anyone because you didn’t have the knowledge or didn’t learn the language. Getting AI to translate for you, these days, is certainly nice. But it’s not as good as if you actually knew how to speak.

The bottom line is that knowledge (all things being equal) makes you as a person more interesting. And let’s face it, the more you know, the more you can connect with people – all kinds of people.

Who Gets the Last Laugh in the Machine Age? Business and Engineering Majors? Or the Liberal Arts?

What’s funny is that people who are focused solely on money/business or engineering often laugh when others say they studied “philosophy” or “sociology” or “gender studies.” “Such a worthless degree,” many might suggest. But the truth is, the people who do study these areas today and “know things” or learn critical thinking skills may, in fact, be the best positioned going forward.

That said, beyond getting employment, knowledge used to just have its own intrinsic value. And way back when in this country, we used to value people who made strides to become educated.

It wasn’t frowned upon or discouraged.

People, after all, should know different areas: philosophy, psychology, economics, sports, finance, physics, history, chemistry, and art. They should be able to talk about how the “great Dutch masters” painted, or understand the basics of Einstein’s theory of relativity, or know that Reggie Jackson hit 3 home runs in Game 6 of the 1977 World Series.

And if you don’t know those things, be curious. Look things up.  

When You Lose Knowledge, You Lose Creativity and the Ability to Connect

Over the summer, I was teaching some high school students who were in a program at Georgetown University. One of the students this year asked me point blank: “Is college worth attending?”

Twenty years ago, even ten years ago, no one would’ve asked that question. But here we are.

My answer, of course, was yes. But not even just for education’s sake, as it were.

The real answer (rationale, if you will) is creativity.

Without knowledge, you have no creativity and no connection. If you think about it, creativity is often about being able to piece together what can seem like disparate pieces of knowledge, but threading them together in a new way people get and understand. In other words, something that seems “new” but it’s based on some existing, underlying shared understanding that’s the source of a connection with someone.

If you don’t know anything, how can you be creative and connect with someone in a way that’s not tiresome or boring? The answer is you can’t.

The best marketers certainly know this. That’s why in our field, we value people who know things about different fields and areas of study. 

Want to Stop ‘AI Slop’? Gain Some Knowledge of Different Areas

There’s been a lot of complaining in marketing and other content areas recently about seeing too much AI slop – generic content, either text, photos, or videos – that is basically average. Not horrible, but also not interesting. (It’s not like that content didn’t exist before. It’s just that you’re seeing more of it produced in a collapsed period of time.)

Indeed, we’ve written about this, suggesting that AI is indeed poised to take the roles of such ‘average’ performers, producing slop a lot faster than the latter can do.

Want to know the one thing that stops this slop from occurring?

It’s nuance, which only comes through actual knowledge. In other words, by knowing something or seeing something, you can help a machine refine what it is you’re producing. That refinement comes because you can connect something together (because you have knowledge) or see something that a machine can’t see or can’t connect.

This is not because a machine doesn’t “know it.”

It most certainly knows more than you. But what it doesn’t have is the knowledge that allows it to see across disciplines and connect the right things together. Only people can do that.

Conclusion

Maybe the truth is, we have to make it not cool to be dumb. Because if left unchecked, it’s not just an innocent thing anymore. It leaves all of us very, very vulnerable (and alone) in a world where machines only get smarter.