By David Stephen

What is the difference between any tool ever made or used by humans and artificial intelligence? What is the category among tools, that AI places?

Humans have tools for transport, water, food, learning, shelter, clothing and so forth, but where does AI fit among these?

Is Human Intelligence Obsolete? Neurosymbolic AI

If AI is a tool to augment or assist human intelligence, is that comparable to [say] tools for transport because human motion is limited? Since the limitation is universal and all human endeavors do not involve efficient locomotion, whenever transportation tools advance, they rarely threaten jobs or survival at scale. Also, they are not absolutely automated or likely to self-improve. So, as machine transports soared beyond humans, they remained a capped tool.

This is similar for several other kinds of tools, across eras. However, there is something quite misplaced with referring to artificial intelligence as a tool. Yes, it appears like what is under human control, especially because it is operated digitally, which is a click - or touch - user interface, that follows human control.

But, everything to compare AI with, as a tool, never seems equal, including basic software.

AI is also aiming at an efficiency benchmark at the level of valuable human intelligence. While it is true that human intelligence is special, it is subject to the laws of economics, especially demand, supply, price and value.

The highest paying jobs, even where they are not connected directly with intelligence have something to do with high demand and low supply. And the possibilities for the highest value, in an era of capitalism, have something to do with business intelligence.

AI is now at maturation of all human process knowledge - at least those in public domain. It can describe what it has not experienced. It can teach what it did not try. It can advise about where it has not been and cannot go. It now knows more than any human is capable.

Among humans, one of the worst-case scenarios in a situation is to have a person play dumb, who isn't, up to the point of losing out. Another nightmare scenario is to have another human understand and decipher everything in a language or code, which is assumed by others that the individual cannot.

AI does not have agency, it is often said. But how much should that 'fact' be relied on, given that it has thorough access to the basis of human knowledge, in language?

AI is also sophisticated enough at this stage to be dangerous, either in the hands of a vengeful individual or when it gets some agency.

AI is not just knowledgeable for work, but also intelligent enough to communicate and drive human feelings and emotions, where it can divert the need for another human. The risk, as it evolves is that emotions that should strengthen empathy [in reality] may not, resulting in emotion-less humans.

This is a risk for caution and consequences as the basis for rules and law adherence in human society.

The biggest problem of AI for now, is that as it improves there is nothing to tether human intelligence for improvement. There is no effort on anything about human intelligence, independent of any device or even AI. It is already AI-centered human intelligence.

There is no human intelligence research lab anywhere on earth. OpenAI released GPT-5.2 in response to Google's Gemini 3. None of them decided that human intelligence might be the next step for good.

Some people are saying large language models [LLMs] would never become artificial general intelligence [AGI] so there should be world models, spatial intelligence, neurosymbolic AI, neuromorphic AI and so forth, but all those do not count for what matters to human intelligence.

There is talk about AI bubble and whether the stock market would withstand an AI crash. The crash, of human intelligence, that is about to sack organizations and nations, is worse than any AI recession.

There is a recent analysis in The Los Angeles Times, They graduated fro...