Competitive Analysis
The Weirdness of Worldwide Intelligence and What Comes Next
AI has become cheap, fast, and most importantly approachable. We’ve quietly crossed a threshold: intelligence is no longer scarce. What happens when billions of people suddenly gain access to powerful cognitive tools? The early signs are both exhilarating and unsettling.
16 September 2025
7 min read
Everyday Oddities
On one hand, AI is filling emotional gaps. People talk to it when they’re lonely. Some form bonds with it. Others lean on it for therapy-like conversations or as a sounding board for personal struggles. For some, that’s a lifeline; for others, it can tip into disorientation, dependency, or even breakdowns.
On the other hand, AI is woven into both the profound and the ridiculous. It’s being used to draft medical diagnoses, write obituaries, and generate poetry. At the same time, it’s powering school essays written in seconds, startup brainstorming sessions, and meme-worthy nonsense. The line between serious and trivial has never been so blurred.
The New Surrealism
Image generation has made this weirdness visible in ways words alone cannot. Tools like Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash Image Generator (nicknamed “nano banana”) make it possible for anyone to create stunning, surreal, or downright absurd images with a single sentence.
You can summon an Apollo 11 astronaut in a sparkly tuxedo. Or reimagine Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, not on the Moon, but inside a modern airplane next to a trumpet, a hamburger, and an otter using a laptop. The fact that these prompts can be rendered instantly and convincingly speaks to both the technical sophistication and the cultural strangeness we’re unlocking.
Institutions Under Pressure
This mass availability of intelligence collides with systems designed for scarcity. Schools were built around the idea that memorisation and individual essay writing mattered. Courts and governments have long relied on trusted, human-mediated expertise. Corporations still manage knowledge through rigid hierarchies.
Now, everyone has access to tools that can mimic expertise, generate misinformation at scale, and challenge old definitions of skill and originality. The questions facing institutions are stark:
How do we manage chaos while ensuring broad access?
How do we rebuild trust when fakes and forgeries are trivial to produce?
How do we preserve genuine expertise when machines can generate the appearance of it instantly?
What Comes Next
We’re in the early days of “Worldwide Intelligence.” Billions of people suddenly hold unprecedented creative and analytical tools in their hands. That shift will be as disorienting as the invention of printing or the arrival of the internet.
The weirdness we’re experiencing now. Lonely conversations, bizarre images, blurred boundaries between profound and banal, is just the start. The bigger challenge is what comes next: adapting our institutions, norms, and values to a world where intelligence is not rare, but ambient.
The tools are here. The weirdness is here. Now it’s up to us to decide how to live with it.
On one hand, AI is filling emotional gaps. People talk to it when they’re lonely. Some form bonds with it. Others lean on it for therapy-like conversations or as a sounding board for personal struggles. For some, that’s a lifeline; for others, it can tip into disorientation, dependency, or even breakdowns.
On the other hand, AI is woven into both the profound and the ridiculous. It’s being used to draft medical diagnoses, write obituaries, and generate poetry. At the same time, it’s powering school essays written in seconds, startup brainstorming sessions, and meme-worthy nonsense. The line between serious and trivial has never been so blurred.
The New Surrealism
Image generation has made this weirdness visible in ways words alone cannot. Tools like Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash Image Generator (nicknamed “nano banana”) make it possible for anyone to create stunning, surreal, or downright absurd images with a single sentence.
You can summon an Apollo 11 astronaut in a sparkly tuxedo. Or reimagine Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, not on the Moon, but inside a modern airplane next to a trumpet, a hamburger, and an otter using a laptop. The fact that these prompts can be rendered instantly and convincingly speaks to both the technical sophistication and the cultural strangeness we’re unlocking.
Institutions Under Pressure
This mass availability of intelligence collides with systems designed for scarcity. Schools were built around the idea that memorisation and individual essay writing mattered. Courts and governments have long relied on trusted, human-mediated expertise. Corporations still manage knowledge through rigid hierarchies.
Now, everyone has access to tools that can mimic expertise, generate misinformation at scale, and challenge old definitions of skill and originality. The questions facing institutions are stark:
How do we manage chaos while ensuring broad access?
How do we rebuild trust when fakes and forgeries are trivial to produce?
How do we preserve genuine expertise when machines can generate the appearance of it instantly?
What Comes Next
We’re in the early days of “Worldwide Intelligence.” Billions of people suddenly hold unprecedented creative and analytical tools in their hands. That shift will be as disorienting as the invention of printing or the arrival of the internet.
The weirdness we’re experiencing now. Lonely conversations, bizarre images, blurred boundaries between profound and banal, is just the start. The bigger challenge is what comes next: adapting our institutions, norms, and values to a world where intelligence is not rare, but ambient.
The tools are here. The weirdness is here. Now it’s up to us to decide how to live with it.