" Such is our intelligence, that intelligence that lives on the illusion of an exponential growth of our stock.
Whereas the most probable hypothesis is that the human race merely has at its disposal, today, as it had yesterday, a general fund, a limited stock that redistributes itself across the generations, but is always of equal quantity.
In intelligence, we might be said to be infinitely superior, but in thought we are probably exactly the equal of preceding and future generations.
There is no privilege of one period over another, nor any absolute progress - there, at least, no inequalities. At species level, democracy rules.
This hypothesis excludes any triumphant evolutionism and also spares us all the apocalyptic views on the loss of the 'symbolic capital' of the species (these are the two standpoints of humanism: triumphant or depressed). For if the original stock of souls, natural intelligence or thought at humanity's disposal is limited, it is also indestructible. There will be as much genius, originality and invention in future periods as in our own, but not more - neither more nor less than in former ages.
This runs counter to two perspectives that are corollaries of each other: positive illuminism - the euphoria of Artificial Intelligence - and regressive nihilism - moral and cultural depression. "

― Jean Baudrillard , The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact