AI Is A Mirror
Anthropic just published a graph that’s worth sitting with - “education years needed to understand the human prompt” vs. the share of workers with a Bachelor’s degree (by occupation).
They take BLS/ACS education attainment by detailed occupation, then estimate (from Claude usage) the average years of schooling needed to understand tasks/prompts associated with each occupation - and plot that against % of workers with a BA+. The relationship is directionally clear - the occupations whose prompts look “more educated” tend to be the ones with more degree-holders.
This puts downward pressure on the Equality dial. If the ability to “use” AI is gated by “prompt literacy” (which itself tracks educational attainment), then AI becomes a mirror that reinforces existing advantage - higher-credential workforces extract more value, faster, while everyone else gets a thinner slice of the productivity upside.
“...our human education measure correlates with actual worker education levels across occupations. These validations suggest individual primitives are directionally correct—and combining them may provide additional analytical value, such as enriching productivity estimates with task success rates or constructing new measures of occupational exposure.” - Anthropic
This is the uncomfortable version of “AI for everyone” - it may be widely available, but not equally legible. And that’s how unequalising effects compound.
> The interface layer is thickening. If you disagree with my interpretation, or you’ve spotted a better signal then reply and tell me.