“For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance; but from the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken away.” (Matthew 25:29)
These words, written two millennia ago, define today with mathematical precision the workings of the current technological revolution. Artificial Intelligence will not equalize the capabilities of society; on the contrary, it will activate the most radical mechanism of cumulative advantage in human history. AI does not act as a substitute for the brain, but as an exponential multiplier of pre-existing capacity.
For those who possess the gift of biological substrate — those who have forged a solid criterion through conceptual depth, critical thinking, broad culture and the capacity for sustained effort — Artificial Intelligence emerges as a hyperbolic lever. These minds do not use technology to outsource thinking, but to massively expand their reach. They design complex interaction strategies, immediately detect the hallucinations of the system thanks to their solid theoretical foundation, and connect machine-generated results in unforeseen and creative ways. Their productive, analytical and strategic capacity does not experience a simple addition, but a multiplication.
At the opposite extreme, for those who lack that substrate or have grown accustomed to shortcuts — those who validate knowledge through automatic responses without ever digesting the substance of a subject — Artificial Intelligence becomes a sedating trap. Without a strong mental structure to question or refine what the algorithm generates, they become purely passive users. They delegate their critical thinking to the system — Claude? Gemini? Harvey? ChatGPT? — and in doing so, they atrophy their own organic capacity.
Thus, the Matthew Effect of the digital age dictates that the gap between the cognitive elite and the average will not narrow, but will become an unbridgeable chasm. Artificial Intelligence will grant intellectual abundance to those who already have the mental structure to process it, while from those who lack their own criterion, the machine will ultimately take away even the need to think. Let us not stop cultivating critical thought — or we will lose what was ours from birth.