The Modern Polymath
How AI Is Blurring the Line Between Specialists, Generalists and Creators
A polymath is someone with deep expertise across multiple, often unrelated domains — someone who thinks creatively, solves complex problems, and sees connections others miss. Historically, polymaths have shaped cultural evolution at pivotal moments, each one a reflection of the possibilities of their era.
Lately, I’ve found myself wondering whether the rise of artificial intelligence is creating the conditions for a new kind of polymath to emerge.
Growing up, I heard the word “polymath” used to describe people like Leonardo da Vinci, Ada Lovelace, and Benjamin Franklin — figures whose brilliance spanned disciplines with an ease that feels almost mythical today. As industrialization accelerated through the 20th century, so did specialization. Academia rewarded depth over breadth. Business culture preached focus, niche, and mastery of a single lane.
The common wisdom became clear:
Pick one thing and become the best at it.
Yet AI seems to be shifting that equation.
Which brings me to the question that keeps resurfacing:
Will AI enable more people to do more things well?
In other words: Is AI creating space for modern polymaths?
In the context of education, this becomes:
Is AI dissolving the old divide between generalists and specialists?
And in entrepreneurship:
Will AI empower a new generation of multipreneurs — founders capable of running several ventures at once?
When I look at what’s unfolding, I don’t see the death of mastery.
I see the birth of augmented breadth — a world where individuals can explore and integrate multiple domains in ways that were previously impossible.
Today, I want to explore how and why this might be happening.
The Education Revolution
AI, primarily in the form of Large Language Models (LLMs), is allowing people to get incredibly customized knowledge and information at their fingertips, at levels we have never seen before in history.
It’s safe to say that, whether we are in an AI bubble or not (I am fairly certain we are) this technology will dramatically alter the knowledge and education landscape.
I see this becoming a net positive in a few primary ways…
Democratizing Wisdom: If the internet made information more accessible, AI is making it personalized, integrated and applied. If we define wisdom as “applied understanding”, then some might argue that AI is actually democratizing wisdom, as opposed to just information. You no longer need a PhD to gain high-level clarity about philosophy, physics or psychology. You need curiosity, discernment, and a decent prompt.
Personalized Learning: Tools like ChatGPT offer on-demand tutoring that adapts to your pace, your gaps, and your style of learning. Study Mode, for example, was explicitly created to support real learning rather than simply providing answers. Instead of one curriculum for 30 students, it’s one curriculum for one. This will fundamentally shift what the standard of education might look like in the future.
Cost Effectiveness: Over the past 5-10 years, we’ve already been seeing a shift from traditional education pathways to alternative online avenues. People like Jordan Peterson are creating “higher education at 1% of the price”. You have platforms like Skool, Mighty Networks and Circle making community-lead learning accessible at scale. The trend is not looking good for the ivory tower and now with LLMs on the loose, I am fairly certain that trend will continue to ramp up. Ironically, AI may also make “elite education” more premium, not less, as synthetically generated content becomes ubiquitous and human mentorship becomes scarce.
Synthetic Knowledge Creation: In a recent interview, Jensen Huang of Nvidia recently said that he believes in 2-3 years, 90% of new knowledge will be generated by AI and according to him “that’s just fine”. I can’t honestly pretend to know what this would actually mean for society if it was true, but I think I tend to agree - it probably is fine and if it means we can automate, delegate and speed up the advancement of our civilization, then I am on board. If new knowledge is primarily derived synthetically, then it would have a profound impact on the way our educational systems would be structured. With synthetic generation comes synthetic speed and growth rates. Knowledge iteration would become so fast that the ways human beings interface with this knowledge would have to shift completely.
On the other hand, AI is also likely to negatively impact the educational landscape in a few ways as well…
Dependence On Technology: Lazy people will become more lazy. People are already becoming more reliant on tools like Chat-GPT to navigate basic life situations. What once required critical thought and contemplation now takes just 5 seconds to prompt a response. When a tool finishes your thinking for you, your cognitive muscles weaken. We’re already seeing the results around the impact of growing up with social media. Now imagine growing up with all of this distraction while also becoming dependent on tools that limit and degrade our executive cognitive functions. The science is not out on this yet but I’ve always said “if you wait for the science, you will miss out on the opportunities”. Unfortunately, a similar line of reasoning probably applies here too. If you wait for the science, you might not be able to think scientifically anymore.
Birthing Boring Minds: If millions of people offload decisions, opinions, and explanations to the same models, we risk becoming a collective hive mind — converging toward the same tone, the same logic and the same ideas. It’s not hard to imagine a future where everyone sounds slightly… similar. I believe this is one of the biggest threats to human creativity and is related to what Brendan McCord, founder of the Cosmos Institute, calls “autocomplete for life.”
Loss of Epistemic Trust: As AI generates more content than humans do, we risk blurring the line between truth, synthesis, hallucination and propaganda.
Before long, there may be: too much information, too many synthetic sources and too little ability to verify anything. Education relies on trust and trust gets harder when everything looks equally polished.Fragmented Attention & Shallow Learning: AI accelerates output but it doesn’t cultivate patience, boredom, depth or embodied learning which are all essential ingredients for mastery. The risk here is that fast learning replaces deep learning and with attention spans already compromised in Millennials and Gen Z, this acceleration risks widening the gap between knowing about something and understanding it deeply. Deep Work will become an artifact of the past.
The Modest Multipreneur
Now let’s look at how AI reshapes entrepreneurship.
A multipreneur is an entrepreneur who builds and manages multiple income streams, brands, or companies simultaneously—rather than focusing on a single business.
In the past, this was extremely difficult to manage because:
every new venture required more people
more people required more management
management required systems and bandwidth
bandwidth was the bottleneck
But today?
AI is quietly shifting those constraints.
Administrative tasks, copywriting, basic marketing, data analysis, bookkeeping, and customer support can now be largely automated or accelerated.
This doesn’t mean running businesses is suddenly “easy.”
But it does mean:
One person can now do what previously required a small team.
To some extent, I’m watching this play out in my own life. I’m building multiple companies at once — The Flying Sage, Legacy Journeys and Kanna Garden— and the only reason that I can assume these ventures can continue to grow simultaneously is because AI reduces operational friction.
Still, I’m not fully convinced multipreneurship will become the norm and honestly, I am definitely not convinced it is the right path for me either.
Here’s why:
AI accelerates execution, but it does not replace vision
AI reduces busywork, but it does not remove decision-making and goal setting
AI helps with output, but it does not eliminate competition
Running multiple businesses still fractures attention
Sam Altman believes we’ll eventually see a one-person billion-dollar company. I agree. But I suspect that founder won’t be building five businesses at once.
They’ll be building one, with the focus of a laser and the leverage of a small digital army.
Breadth and Beyond
AI won’t create more geniuses.
But it will create more people with the potential to operate like polymaths.
AI won’t give us da Vinci’s imagination — but it can give more people the tools to explore multiple domains at a high level.
AI won’t turn everyone into a multipreneur — but it may allow those who are naturally wired this way to actually pull it off.
AI won’t replace specialists — but it will empower generalists.
And perhaps most importantly:
AI will reward people who retain their humanity — creativity, intuition, judgment, and taste — in a world where sameness becomes cheap.
The future belongs not to those who know the most,
but to those who can integrate and feel the most.
Not to the specialist,
not to the generalist,
but to the integrated mind that can move fluidly between domains and remain curious, adaptive, courageous and alive.
Maybe that’s the new polymath.
And maybe AI is simply widening the doorway.
Farewell Until Next Time 🔮
Thank you for tuning in.
For those interested, next weekend I am facilitating one final retreat this year and we have a few spots left. We don’t usually do this but I am currently offering a few final spots in the retreat at a significant discount. Reply to this email or book a free discovery call with me here to find out more.
Our full schedule for 2026 will be released soon, but for now, we will be accepting applications for our Feb 20th and March 20th dates.
If you have any thoughts about what I shared today, please leave a comment below. I would love to hear about how this article resonates with you.
What are your thoughts around AI?
With gratitude,
Michael 🤍