{"id":4223,"date":"2026-07-12T09:30:41","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T04:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=4223"},"modified":"2026-07-12T09:30:41","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T04:30:41","slug":"haves-have-nots-and-know-nots-inside-ais-new-class-divide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=4223","title":{"rendered":"Haves, have-nots and know-nots: Inside AI&#039;s new class divide"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images.axios.com\/U_Egmk_rK5A99ThCQk3vrGrIkZQ=\/0x0:1920x1080\/1366x768\/2026\/07\/06\/1783369943495.jpeg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A staggering class divide now separates how Americans experience <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/technology\/automation-and-ai\" target=\"_blank\">artificial intelligence<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>For frontier power users, AI feels like a r<em>evolution<\/em>: a force capable of conjuring companies, building software and solving complex problems at warp speed.<\/li>\n<li>For the average person, it feels more like an <em>evolution<\/em>: a smarter search bar, a faster inbox, an ambient tech layer that saves time \u2014 but not much else.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Why it matters: <\/strong>Trillions of dollars in economic value \u2014 and the livelihoods of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/05\/27\/ai-hype-doom-openai-anthropic\" target=\"_blank\">millions of workers<\/a> \u2014 are being staked on a technology that most Americans neither trust nor fully understand.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<ul>\n<li>It&#8217;s a new chapter in America&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/pro\/tech-policy\/2024\/04\/11\/exclusive-poll-most-americans-see-the-digital-divide-as-an-election-issue\" target=\"_blank\">digital divide<\/a> \u2014 the AI &#8220;haves,&#8221; &#8220;have-nots&#8221; and &#8220;know-nots&#8221; \u2014 with profound implications for the future of wealth, work and power.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Zoom in:<\/strong> The newest <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/07\/07\/ai-hacking-benchmarking-tests\" target=\"_blank\">frontier models<\/a> are designed for an agentic world of coding, research and cybersecurity that most Americans will never see, let alone operate.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/07\/08\/gpt-sol-ultra-openai-anthropic-grok\" target=\"_blank\">OpenAI&#8217;s Sol<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/06\/27\/anthropic-fable-5-return-soon\" target=\"_blank\">Anthropic&#8217;s Fable<\/a> now sit atop the pyramid of elite AI obsession, prized for running long coding and research loops with minimal human intervention.<\/li>\n<li>Prominent developers have spent the week personifying the two models \u2014 debating their temperaments, work ethics, even their personalities, the way sports fans argue over rival athletes.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;My overall feel is that Fable is a &#8216;wise owl&#8217; who is very thoughtful and very well spoken,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/petergostev\/status\/2074918176354115886?s=20\" target=\"_blank\">tweeted<\/a> AI researcher Peter Gostev. &#8220;GPT-5.6-Sol is like a rottweiler who will grab the problem by the throat and not let go until it is done.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Reality check: <\/strong>The people fluent enough to judge Sol against Fable on a coding benchmark are a tiny slice of the country. For most Americans, those names and metrics mean nothing.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Millions of people encounter AI passively or unknowingly \u2014 through search summaries, AI-generated content, customer-service bots and invisible features inside apps.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/internet\/2026\/06\/17\/americans-and-ai-2026-chatbots-smart-devices-and-views-on-impact\/\" target=\"_blank\">Nearly half of U.S. adults<\/a> now use AI chatbots, but the most common use is basic information search \u2014 the same job Google has done for two decades, a world away from autonomous coding agents.<\/li>\n<li>OpenAI counts more than 50 million paying subscribers in its weekly ChatGPT user base of more than 900 million. The population running agentic coding tools is a fraction of that fraction.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Between the lines: <\/strong>Even among the elites living the frontier AI revolution, there&#8217;s a pecking order.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Sol began as a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/06\/25\/trump-administration-openai-gpt-model-release\" target=\"_blank\">restricted preview<\/a> for OpenAI&#8217;s trusted partners and select organizations before broader rollout, making early access itself a <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/danshipper\/status\/2074859437374820691?s=20\" target=\"_blank\">status marker<\/a> inside AI circles.<\/li>\n<li>Fable was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/06\/13\/anthropic-amazon-white-house\" target=\"_blank\">pulled offline globally<\/a> for nearly three weeks in June under U.S. export controls, while its more powerful sibling, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/04\/08\/mythos-system-card\" target=\"_blank\">Mythos<\/a>, remains restricted to a small number of trusted organizations.<\/li>\n<li>The result is a hierarchy inside the hierarchy: free users, paid users, power users, preview users and an insider class testing capabilities the rest of the world can only read about.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The big picture: <\/strong>The AI industry ultimately needs broad social permission for the transformation it&#8217;s selling: more data centers, deeper workplace automation, and AI embedded in schools, government and daily life.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Yet as AI adoption has climbed, trust has fallen: 63% of Americans say AI is advancing too quickly, and just 16% expect it to benefit society over the next 20 years, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/internet\/2026\/06\/17\/americans-and-ai-2026-chatbots-smart-devices-and-views-on-impact\/\" target=\"_blank\">Pew Research<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>The clearest gains are being captured by investors, tech giants and power users, while ordinary Americans are being asked to absorb the disruption to jobs, energy and information feeds.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What to watch: <\/strong>The Trump administration&#8217;s Labor Department published a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dol.gov\/newsroom\/releases\/eta\/eta20260213\" target=\"_blank\">national AI literacy framework<\/a> in February, aimed at helping workers &#8220;share in the prosperity that AI will create.&#8221;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft and Amazon helped pool $500 million in June for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/06\/25\/anthropic-labor-market-ai-jobs-crisis\" target=\"_blank\">RAISE US<\/a>, a workforce retraining initiative led by former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and former Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb.<\/li>\n<li>But basic literacy efforts can only go so far: Frontier users have better tools, earlier access, deeper technical context and hundreds of hours of trial-and-error with systems that change every few weeks.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Flashback: <\/strong>A century ago, electricity exposed a similar divide between Americans living in the modern age and those watching it from the dark.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>By 1930, nearly 90% of urban homes had electricity, compared with roughly 10% of farms. Private utilities had little incentive to wire rural customers spread across miles of unprofitable territory.<\/li>\n<li>It took the New Deal&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/eh.net\/encyclopedia\/rural-electrification-administration\/\" target=\"_blank\">Rural Electrification Administration<\/a> \u2014 and years of federal loans \u2014 to bridge a gap the market had left behind.<\/li>\n<li>AI&#8217;s divide may be even harder to close: Frontier access is scarce and expensive, and even where it&#8217;s free, most people don&#8217;t know what to do with it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The bottom line: <\/strong>The AI industry is betting on inevitability. But history suggests technological revolutions need legitimacy, too.<\/p>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A staggering class divide now separates how Americans experience artificial intelligence: For frontier power users, AI feels like a revolution: a force capable of conjuring companies, building software and solving complex problems at warp speed. For the average person, it feels more like an evolution: a smarter search bar, a faster inbox, an ambient tech&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4224,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.axios.com\/U_Egmk_rK5A99ThCQk3vrGrIkZQ=\/0x0:1920x1080\/1366x768\/2026\/07\/06\/1783369943495.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-political-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}