The AGI Gurus Selling Less Study and More Obedience Now

Lede

The loudest people declaring school obsolete often sell a future where everyone learns less and obeys more.

Hermit Off Script

Every time I watch the so-called gurus of business, AI and AGI selling their future from a stage or a podcast chair, school somehow becomes obsolete. University becomes a museum. Learning becomes a delay. The young person is told to skip study, skip the slow years, skip the teachers, skip the fellow students and skip the difficult conversations, because super AGI will arrive and take all jobs anyway. And, of course, everyone is supposed to become an entrepreneur, because apparently the future economy will be made entirely of founders selling courses to other founders. Funny how this prophecy mostly lands on coders and software workers, probably because many of these prophets came from that world and watched technology boom through code. From there, they mistake one road for the whole map.
But life is not only money. Most people want some money, yes, because rent still exists and supermarkets don’t accept enlightenment. But they also want quality of life, clean surroundings, travel, culture, friendship, love, family, and the feeling that their days belong to them. The future is supposed to be about humans, not robots with subscription plans. A money-only mind struggles to feel that.
When I listen to scientists, artists and real creators, the better pattern appears. They often grew through study, through teachers, through colleagues, through being challenged by people who could see what they could become before they could see it themselves. That is what school can do at its best. It can shape the mind, but also the person. It can place a strange student next to another strange student and, after enough effort, something alive appears.
I trust those people more than tech moguls, power collectors and money worshippers. I rarely hear the loudest entrepreneurs properly honour the thinkers, helpers, engineers, teachers, assistants, cleaners, designers, drivers and ordinary workers who made their empires possible. Society loves the one person on the cover and forgets the many people behind the machine. Yes, the brain matters. But without the right people, the right environment, and the right timing, the brain is just a battery in a drawer. And to be fair, if workers had been paid properly across the system, there would probably be fewer billionaires, or at least fewer people treated like saints because they became rich by making others cheaper.
So take my advice and the advice of better minds: study more than before. Build businesses. Start things. Use AI. Use every tool that helps. But don’t give up learning. The help is now tremendous, so the limit is closer to your mind, your discipline and your courage. Study when it is time to learn. If you can afford it, study inside a serious environment like a university, where teachers, colleagues and pressure can shape you properly. If you can’t afford it, then self-learn as much as you can, with even more discipline, because no one will build that structure for you. Don’t throw away your young years for a guru’s shortcut unless the path truly fits your soul. Some fields, such as medicine, engineering and law, require deep formal study for a reason. If you love what you are doing, make the best of those years. Not only for money. For your soul, and for the souls you may help. Don’t listen too closely to people who saw only money, forgot to live, then tried to sell you the same wound as wisdom.

If the door to university is closed by money, don’t let the door to learning close inside your own mind.

P.S. Yes, maybe teaching has to change. Maybe the way we teach needs to adapt, use better tools, and stop pretending a classroom must look the same forever. Maybe education should be more tailored to children and teenagers, helping them find the direction of their talent earlier instead of pushing everyone through the same corridor with different shoes. But building a start-up is not the same as building knowledge, ethics and judgement for the future. A company can be built fast. A mind should not be. The best teachers, the best souls in a field, and sometimes the best souls in life, have always helped give birth to the strongest thinkers humanity has had. That was true for the great minds of the past, and it is still true now, even if the stage lights are pointed at founders instead of teachers.

Vision of the Future

Maybe, because of AI, the future will move in the opposite direction from what the gurus are selling. Maybe universities will become required for almost everyone, not because people are forced into them by fear, but because advanced learning will finally make sense from every angle. If AI takes over more routine work, then human beings will need deeper study, better ethics, stronger judgement, more culture, more philosophy, more science, more art, and more time around serious minds. Education may become free, or even supported financially, so people can attend properly instead of treating learning as a luxury item. In that future, school is not a factory for jobs. It becomes a focus point for the human soul, the mind and the society that still wants humans to be worth listening to.

So yes, schools and advanced universities are needed more than before. Actually, university should become free and accessible for everyone, not only for the few who can afford the gate fee to knowledge.

What does not make sense

• Declaring school obsolete while selling tools built on decades of research culture.
• Saying AGI will take every job, then mainly talking as if every human is a coder.
• Treating study as a waste while employers keep asking for judgement, collaboration and skill.
• Worshipping one founder while ignoring the people who built, repaired, cleaned, taught, tested and carried the work.
• Calling education outdated while admitting the future needs people who can keep learning.
• Reducing life to wealth, then pretending the future is being built for humanity.

Sense check / The numbers

1. Stanford HAI says AGI has no universally accepted test, which makes big AGI claims hard to verify. The 2026 AI Index also notes that models can win an International Mathematical Olympiad gold medal while the top model reads analogue clocks correctly only 50.1 per cent of the time. [Stanford HAI, Stanford AI Index]
2. The World Economic Forum projects 170 million new jobs and 92 million displaced jobs by 2030, for a net gain of 78 million. It also says nearly 40 per cent of job skills may change and 63 per cent of employers already cite skills gaps as the main barrier. [WEF]
3. England’s 2024 graduate labour market data shows 87.6 per cent of working-age graduates in employment, compared with 90.0 per cent of postgraduates and 68.0 per cent of non-graduates. High-skilled employment was 67.9 per cent for graduates and 23.7 per cent for non-graduates. [DfE]
4. The Gallup-Purdue Index found that 63 per cent of US college graduates strongly agreed they had a professor who made them excited about learning, 27 per cent said professors cared about them as a person, and 22 per cent had a mentor who encouraged them. Graduates who felt supported were 17 per cent likely to be thriving in all 5 well-being areas, compared with 6 per cent who did not feel supported. [Gallup-Purdue]
5. Oxfam says global billionaire wealth reached $18.3 trillion in 2025 and rose by over 16 per cent that year. It also says the richest 56 people in the UK now hold more wealth than 27 million people combined. [Oxfam]

The sketch

Scene 1: The shortcut sermon
A guru silhouette stands on a stage beside a vending machine marked AGI. A student holds a book and looks uncertain.
Dialogue:
Guru: “School is dead.”
Machine: “Insert future.”
Student: “Where’s the thinking?”

Scene 2: The living classroom
A teacher, scientist, artist and students sit around a table covered with notes, tools and half-built ideas.
Dialogue:
Teacher: “Try again.”
Student: “Now I see.”
Artist: “That’s learning.”

Scene 3: The forgotten builders
A giant trophy labelled Founder stands on a platform while many small worker silhouettes hold it up from below.
Dialogue:
Crowd: “Genius.”
Worker: “And payroll?”
Trophy: “Please clap.”

What to watch, not the show

• The business model behind anti-school advice.
• The incentive to sell speed instead of depth.
• The use of AGI fear to push young people into panic choices.
• The erasure of teachers, colleagues and workers from success stories.
• The narrowing of human value to productivity and income.
• The split between tool ownership and worker dependency.
• The risk of replacing education with obedience to platforms.

The Hermit take

Study more. Use AI as a tool, not a parent.
The future belongs to people who can think, care, build and refuse the sales pitch.

Keep or toss

Keep / Toss.
Keep AI as help, study and business ambition.
Toss the guru sermon that sells ignorance as freedom.

Sources

• Stanford HAI AGI definition: https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-definitions/what-is-agi-artificial-general-intelligence
• Stanford HAI 2026 AI Index: https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/2026-ai-index-report
• World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report 2025 press release: https://www.weforum.org/press/2025/01/future-of-jobs-report-2025-78-million-new-job-opportunities-by-2030-but-urgent-upskilling-needed-to-prepare-workforces/
• Department for Education graduate labour market statistics 2024: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/graduate-labour-markets/2024
• Gallup-Purdue Index Report 2014: https://www.luminafoundation.org/files/resources/galluppurdueindex-report-2014.pdf
• Oxfam billionaire wealth report 2026: https://www.oxfam.org.uk/media/press-releases/billionaire-wealth-jumps-three-times-faster-in-2025-to-highest-peak-ever-sparking-dangerous-political-inequality-says-oxfam/