For most of history, knowing things was power. Access to information was gated by education, geography, language, connections. The person who memorized the textbook, who had the right degree, who knew the right people, held the advantage.
AI flattens that. Anyone with a laptop can now query the world's knowledge in seconds. The information itself is no longer the scarce resource. What becomes scarce, and therefore valuable, is the ability to think abstractly, to ask quality questions, and to judge what the answer is worth. Owning the information matters less. Knowing what to do with it matters more.
This shifts the game from accumulation to compression. The person who can encode a messy problem into a precise question will extract more from AI than the person who has read every book on the subject. Deliberate practice in refining your questions, in thinking at the right level of abstraction, is now a higher-leverage investment than deliberate practice in memorizing facts.