Mass Intelligence

One Useful Thing · 10 months ago

Over a billion people now regularly use AI chatbots including ChatGPT with 700 million weekly users, as powerful models become cheaper and easier to access through improved interfaces and reduced costs. The cost per million tokens for running GPT-5 Nano dropped to roughly 14 cents compared to $50 for GPT-4, while within days of GPT-5's launch, the percentage of paying customers using Reasoner models increased from 7% to 24% and free users accessing top models grew from nearly zero to 7%. This shift toward Mass Intelligence means institutions built for scarce intelligence—schools, hospitals, courts, governments—must now adapt to a world where a billion people have access to AI capable of outperforming humans at intellectual tasks, creating both opportunities and novel challenges around trust, expertise, and societal impact.