The new bare minimum

The first time I heard about a tool to help teachers detect if students used AI to write essays, I laughed. Lost battle! What’s the point of saying “this looks like AI” if soon we won’t be able to tell the difference?

Once AI fully matches human output and adoption goes mainstream, the bar will rise. When everyone can produce what once required exceptional brilliance, the world will ask, “is that all you’ve got?”

It’s 1982. Calculators are catching on. A student uses one to solve a math problem. The teacher seizes it: “You need to do this with your brain.” But in 2025, no teacher rewards you for crunching numbers. It’s assumed (and expected) that you used a calculator. The baseline moved. With AI, it’s moving again — faster, and across everything.

That’s why today’s resistance is short-sighted. We’re competing on the very tasks being automated. Technology’s job is to take over the now, so humans can evolve into what’s next. Early adopters will briefly benefit from using AI to quietly generate impressive work. But soon, that won’t be enough.

The magic will become the minimum. And when it does, the new value would be how far you can combine your intelligence with AI to create work that’s significantly above the previous average.

We need to stop defending the old bar and start using AI to go beyond it.