Chimpanzees of the Future?

A striking metaphor that Elon Musk recently used in an interview with The Economist can keep one reeling for days. He told his interviewer Zanny Minton Beddoes, the editor-in-chief of this weekly international affairs journal, that AI would outsmart the sum of human intelligence in five years, and that – in ten years – humans may no longer be in control. The analogy he used to clarify the latter prediction was astounding. Here is a video clip from the interview recorded for “The Insider” section of The Economist: (“Elon Musk on AI,” July 23, 2026).

The relevant part of the conversation went as follows:

Beddoes: You’re sure that humans will no longer be in control in ten years’ time?

Musk: It is unlikely in the same way that … If the difference in the intelligence between AI and humans is vastly greater than the difference in intelligence between AI and chimpanzees, it is hard to imagine that the chimpanzees would be in charge. We are essentially an evolved form of chimpanzee.

My readers might wonder why Musk’s prediction is relevant to this blog. Well, his notion is so general that it could encompass teaching, learning, writing, and educational administration. If AI will teach better and learn better than humans, what will be the point of teaching, and more importantly, of studying? Self-enlightenment? Leisure? Learners in higher education currently educate themselves mainly to enter the workforce, but when the workforce is mostly composed of robots, students may begin to question the value of their education. In terms of writing skills, we can already see journalists, editors, and others wondering what will become of their future. As for educational administration, including both the academic side, such as requirement-setting for degrees, and the non-academic aspect, such as human resources, it is not impossible to envisage AI making more reasonable decisions and managing their implementation in matters such as recruitment, screening, and evaluation. For example, AI could spot and act upon conflicts of interest more readily than humans. A nightmare for some current administrators, certainly, as they would likely become redundant.

In the same interview, Musk expressed optimism that we are moving into an era of abundance where humans should be able to acquire whatever they need easily. Wealth would no longer be important as money may become almost worthless when robots produce more than what people need. Yet Musk’s chimpanzee metaphor remains powerful and may even be extended to include the possibility of regression in human intelligence. For example, Kosmyna et. al. have reported that fewer neural connections form in the brains of writers who depend on AI: “Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels” (“Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task”). Psychologists were already sounding the alarm regarding declining IQs in those born after a peak in 1975 in the developed world, as reported in Psychology Today last year ( “The Rise of Homo Idioticus: Are We Getting More Stupid?”):

We may no longer be Homo sapiens—the “wise man.” Nor are we Homo economicus, the supposedly rational actor in classical economics. Increasingly, we are becoming Homo idioticus—a being defined not by wisdom or logic but by emotional impulses, misinformation, and intellectual inertia.

It is likely that AI is gradually promoting itself while demoting us. Time to pause and reflect on where we’re all heading, wouldn’t you agree?