As AI advances, it will increasingly exceed our individual capacity to manage it.

AI can already process volumes of information beyond the capability of any individual.

As systems become more sophisticated, they will coordinate more activities, consider more outcomes and make decisions at speeds we cannot follow.

Systems increasingly supply both the proposed action and much of the basis for approving it.

Our ability to assess that reasoning and its consequences limits how much authority we can realistically exercise.

This limitation does not imply misalignment, deception or hostility. It follows from the growing difference between human and AI capability.

Individual understanding is only part of humanity’s intellectual capacity. Human collective intelligence allows us to combine knowledge, experience and judgement to address problems beyond any one person’s abilities.

AI could strengthen this by helping people bring different expertise to the same problem, test competing explanations and share what they discover. A weakness identified could inform the work of others. Evidence from different communities could reveal consequences that any one group would miss.

People will need ways to connect with AI and one another to build on collective findings. Cooperation and fair access matter because they determine whose knowledge contributes and who can participate.

We should be as ambitious about developing human collective intelligence as we are about advancing AI itself.

That means designing AI to strengthen our ability to investigate and reason together, alongside its ability to act independently. Progress should be judged both by what these systems can accomplish and by how well they collectively equip humanity to benefit from their use.