You Think You're Smart?

Well, I do too.

Thirteen GCSEs, two AO levels (yes, I'm that old), four A levels, Cambridge university degree and two Masters degrees.

It's not a brag. It's just fact. Intelligence can be measured. And I'm pretty fucking clever.

I did everything the system told me to do. I studied hard, memorised facts, ticked boxes, collected certificates. And for a long time, it worked.

I was rewarded for being clever. For knowing the answers. For being the one who could think faster, write clearer and recall more.

But now?

It doesn't matter. The world couldn't care less.

Being smart is pointless.

Because my phone is way smarter than you (and me).

The Death of “Being Smart”

Most of what schools and universities reward (even today) isn’t intelligence. It’s compliance. It’s memory. It’s the ability to play the game.

I spent years learning how to synthesise academic arguments, write essays in the right structure, and quote the right theorists. But now, Chat GPT can do that in seconds. Faster, cheaper, and, frankly, often better.

AI has democratised intelligence.

It’s made “being smart” a commodity. You can download it, prompt it, rent it by the month. You no longer need to be a genius, you just need to know what questions to ask.

So if the world’s knowledge now lives in your pocket, why are schools and universities still training people to learn stuff?

Education Is Stuck in 1995

Education hasn’t caught up with the world it claims to prepare us for.

It’s still teaching people how to be clever, when what we need is people who can think creatively, make judgement calls, and build trust.

It’s still obsessed with answers, when the future belongs to those who can ask better questions.

It’s still designing courses around scarcity:

Scarce information

Scarce expertise

Scarce opportunity

...when AI has made all three abundant.

The system is broken because it was built for a world where knowledge was expensive. Now, it’s free. And instead of adapting, education is doubling down. More degrees. More assessments. More meaningless metrics.

Students are paying tens of thousands of pounds to learn skills a chatbot can replicate. Professors are lecturing on subjects they could be co-teaching with AI but instead, they’re banning it.

That’s not education. That’s denial.

The Smartest People Will Be the Dumbest People in the Room

Here’s the paradox: the smarter you are, the more obsolete you might become.

If your entire identity is built around being “the clever one”, AI has just kicked the ladder out from under you.

It’s humbling and for some, terrifying, to realise that intelligence, once a superpower, is now a baseline feature of every device we own.

When intelligence is cheap, humanity becomes the premium.

And humanity means curiosity, emotional intelligence, courage, empathy, and originality. The ability to make meaning out of noise. The guts to do something AI can’t.

To connect, persuade, lead, and imagine.

But schools don’t teach that. They teach you to compete with the machine, not to transcend it.

The New Meritocracy

For generations, the formula was simple:

Study hard → Get good grades → Get a good job.

Now, the new formula looks more like this:

Experiment relentlessly → Learn fast → Stay curious → Build something real.

AI doesn’t replace people who use it. It replaces people who ignore it.

The new meritocracy won’t be built on intelligence, it’ll be built on adaptability. The people who thrive will be the ones who treat AI as an extension of their creativity, not a threat to their identity.

The future belongs to prompt engineers, yes but also to human engineers: those who understand people, problems, and possibilities.

What Universities Should Be Doing (But Aren’t)

If I were running a university today, I’d burn the curriculum to the ground and start over.

I’d stop teaching students what to think, and start teaching them how to think.

I’d make “AI fluency” as fundamental as literacy.

I’d replace exams with projects, research papers with prototypes, and grades with impact.

Because education shouldn’t be about storing information, it should be about making use of it.

We don’t need more clever graduates. We need creative problem solvers. We need students who can walk into a room, open a laptop, and say, “Let’s figure this out.”

That’s what education should produce. But it won’t.

Not until it stops pretending AI is cheating.

The Illusion of Effort

If I'd grown up in today’s world, I’d probably spend less time studying and more time doing.

Because most of what we call “hard work” in education is just a performance. Endless essays. Pointless deadlines. Hoop after hoop.

I worked hard but I wasn’t necessarily learning. I was performing intelligence. Mimicking it. Packaging it for the system.

AI exposes that illusion. It shows how much of our effort was actually wasted on things that can now be automated.

And that should liberate us. It should free us to focus on the parts of learning that are still uniquely human: thinking critically, experimenting, collaborating, failing, and trying again.

But instead, most institutions are treating AI like a virus.

They’re policing prompts instead of redesigning pedagogy.

They’re measuring plagiarism instead of measuring potential.

So, What’s the Point of Being Smart Now?

If you’re reading this thinking, “So what’s left for people like me?”, that’s exactly the right question.

Because intelligence used to be the finish line. Now, it’s just the starting point.

The point isn’t to be smart anymore. It’s to do something smart.

Your degree doesn’t matter. Your output does. Your ideas do. Your ability to adapt, communicate, and create value. That’s what counts now.

So stop competing with AI. Collaborate with it. Stop measuring your worth by how much you know, and start measuring it by what you can make happen.

Because the truth is being smart won’t save you. Being useful will.

So What?

If you’re a student: stop chasing grades. Start chasing growth.

If you’re a teacher: stop testing memory. Start teaching curiosity.

If you’re a leader: stop hiring for intellect. Start hiring for adaptability.

And if, like me, you once believed intelligence was your edge, then let it go. AI has levelled the field. Everyone is “smart” now.

The real question is: what are you going to do with it?

Until next time,

Jon "child genius" Kaye

Choosing to live more deliberately

P.S.

If you were really smart, and wanted to do something really smart, then you'd share this email with your best friend. They should know this shit too, don't you think?