What if intelligence were free?
The Johns Hopkins model university in an era of commoditized intelligence
Industry veteran Logan Kilpatrick offered this observation today: "if you are not planning for the price of intelligence to go to zero, the next 3-5 years are going to be incredibly disruptive to your business / life." And then, later the same day, his former employer dropped the full version of their o1 reasoning model.
As a thought experiment, let’s suppose Kilpatrick is right and imagine what the “incredible disruption” might look like for research universities.
The Johns Hopkins/“R1” style research university as we know it was built on a bedrock of scarcity - not of buildings or endowments, but of cognitive capacity itself. These institutions have served as intellectual oases, carefully cultivating pools of expertise through the painstaking work of selection, training, and collective inquiry. But what if we stand at the precipice of a transformation that could render this model not merely obsolete, but fundamentally misaligned with society’s needs?
Consider the essential alchemy of the modern research university: brilliant faculty mentoring promising students, methodically expanding the boundaries of human knowledge through years of dedicated study. This process has given us everything from quantum mechanics to cognitive neuroscience. Yet we're approaching a moment when artificial intelligence may democratize genius-level analytical capabilities, making them as freely available as electricity or running water.
In this new post-anthropocentric intelligence paradigm, the traditional markers of academic achievement - prestigious fellowships, methodological mastery, even the PhD itself - risk becoming curious artifacts of an age when human intelligence was the limiting factor in scientific progress. The scaffolding of academic hierarchy, built on the premise that expertise must be earned through years of apprenticeship, will collapse when anyone can summon the equivalent of a thousand brilliant research assistants with a simple prompt.
But this isn't just about the democratization of knowledge - it's about the need for a fundamental reconstruction of how humanity approaches its greatest challenges. The universities that survive this transition would need to reimagine themselves not as repositories of expertise, but as orchestrators of ambition. Their value might lie not in what they know, or how cleverly they think, but in what they dare to attempt.
These evolved institutions might come to resemble something closer to DARPA than traditional universities - grand experimental stations where the infinite analytical power of AI meets the stubborn constraints of physical reality. They will tackle projects that demand more than mere cognition: quantum computing facilities that stretch across acres, bioengineering initiatives that require carefully controlled environments, climate intervention systems that must be tested at planetary scale.
The irony is that as intelligence becomes ubiquitous, the physical and social infrastructure of universities may become more crucial than ever. While any individual might have the cognitive tools to design a fusion reactor, actually building one requires massive coordination, specialized facilities, and complex networks of institutional relationships - exactly the kind of resources that universities have spent centuries accumulating.
This transformation presents a profound challenge to the idea of higher education itself. What becomes of undergraduate education when perfect mastery of any subject is instantly accessible? Why spend years in lecture halls when superintelligent tutors are available on demand? The answer may be that universities will need to shift from teaching what we know to exploring what we don't - from the transmission of existing knowledge to the collaborative pursuit of the seemingly impossible.
The research universities that thrive in this new era will be those that can pivot from being guardians of scarce cognitive expertise to becoming architects of audacious exploration. They will succeed not because they house the brightest minds, but because they can channel almost unlimited intelligence toward humanity's greatest challenges, marshalling the physical, social, political, and organizational resources that remain stubbornly finite even in an age of cognitive abundance.
Could we make this leap in Kilpatrick’s vision of the future? Or would we remain comfortably beholden to an organizational model built for a bygone world where intelligence was a scarce resource?