The Techno-Polymath

Generalists hold a unique advantage. Having a wide breadth of experiences, skills, and mindsets enables people to connect various ideas together. The surface area for creativity is wider amongst those with a multidimensional view of the world.

The archetype of the polymath - a person with expertise across a variety of subjects - was a unique sort of human. These people innovated in a variety of fields and would draw inspiration across domains. Some were engineers, painters, philosophers, and poets all at once. Such polymaths often have their names echo throughout millennia. Leonardo da Vinci, Aristotle, and Isaac Newton are prime examples.

But polymaths became a dying breed over the course of time. The rise of industrial society led to a paradigm shift where specialization in one skillset or domain became the norm. Society became structured in such a way as to incentivize those are who are really good at one thing. University majors are dedicated to singular disciplines. Corporations hire individuals for highly specified roles.

The carpenter used to make the whole bed. But now one person makes the legs, another makes the frame, and yet another assembles them together.

The rapid development of AI is creating an interesting change however. We are approaching the point where single-domain expertise will be saturated by machines. You can train a model to be highly proficient at one thing and a couple of adjacent things. General purpose models are being purposed for hyper-specific tasks as we speak. Once AI gains adequate agency, then specialists will be out-specialized.

Generalists will have a very unique advantage though. A generalist who hovers at a B tier level across 3 or 4 domains can level up to A tier with AI. The value AI provides to generalists is a multiplicative effect on their wide breadth of knowledge, skills, and ideas - given they know how to use leverage technology.

Soon we will see a new archetype - the techno-polymath. Generalists with a broad understanding of the world will use technology to amplify their talents.

Humans will extend their skills with AI. Machines will multiply the minds of humans.