Introduction

AI Has Begun Destroying the Scarcity of Information

For a long time,
information itself was value.

Those who knew more held advantage.

Information asymmetry.
Knowledge gaps.
Expertise.
Know-how.

These created economic superiority.

But today,
with the rise of generative AI,
this assumption is rapidly collapsing.

This is one of the major turning points of this book.

Until now, humanity built society around:

“How do we gather information?”

Libraries.
Newspapers.
Television.
Search engines.
Social media.

However, generative AI does not merely provide access to information.

It generates information itself.

This is the decisive difference.

In other words, AI is beginning to bring an end to:

the age of information scarcity.

And society is now moving beyond:

information overload

into an era of:

meaning overload.

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1. Why Was Information Valuable?

The first important question is:

Why was information valuable in the first place?

The answer is simple.

Because it was scarce.

In past societies,
the cost of obtaining information was high.

You had to:

search for books,
meet experts,
attend universities,
gain experience,
and fail repeatedly.

In other words, knowledge required:

time cost,
spatial cost,
and experiential cost.

Therefore,

“knowing something”

itself became valuable.

The Economic Structure of the Information Society

In the information society,
many companies grew massive through:

the aggregation of information.

Google.
Bloomberg.
Reuters.
Wikipedia.
Search engines.
Social media.

They dominated:

the gateways to information.

In other words, the information society was fundamentally:

an economy of information distribution infrastructure.

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2. The Shock of Generative AI

AI Began Generating Information

However, generative AI is beginning to fundamentally transform this structure.

Because AI no longer merely searches for information.

It generates information itself.

Text.
Images.
Music.
Video.
Code.
Designs.
Summaries.
Analysis.

Generative AI has begun mass-producing:

knowledge representations themselves.

What is important here is that AI is not merely:

a “knowledge copying machine.”

Rather, AI is:

a knowledge reconstruction machine.

In other words, generative AI is not simply copying existing information.

It learns relationships
and generates new combinations.

As a result, society has entered an era where:

the cost of knowledge generation itself

is collapsing dramatically.

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3. Information Infinite Expansion

Information Is No Longer a Finite Resource

The essential transformation occurring here is:

the infinite expansion of information.

Information used to be finite.

Writing newspaper articles required humans.

Writing specialized books required years of expertise.

But today,

AI can generate massive amounts instantly.

Society is moving from:

“information scarcity”

to:

“information infinitization.”

At this point, the thing that collapses most dramatically is:

scarcity itself.

Much of economic value historically depended upon scarcity.

But AI is pushing:

the replication cost of information

toward near zero.

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4. Knowledge Commoditization

“Simply Knowing” No Longer Creates Value

What emerges here is:

Knowledge Commoditization.

Previously,

specialized knowledge itself was valuable.

Law.
Accounting.
Translation.
Programming.
Analysis.
Design.

But today, generative AI is beginning to assist and generate these capabilities.

Experts will not disappear.

However, the important shift is that:

the advantage of access to knowledge

is rapidly collapsing.

In other words,

simply “knowing”

will no longer differentiate people.

Value is gradually shifting from:

knowledge possession

to:

knowledge operation.

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5. Collapse of Scarcity

The Foundations of the Information Economy Begin to Break Down

Economics has traditionally been about:

the allocation of scarce resources.

But generative AI makes information effectively infinite.

This means that:

the foundations of the information economy itself

are beginning to collapse.

For example:

Articles can be mass-generated.
Images can be mass-generated.
Code can be mass-generated.
Video can be mass-generated.

In other words,

content itself

is no longer scarce.

What is especially important is that:

even high-quality information

can now be generated at massive scale.

Thus, in the AI era,

even high-quality information becomes oversupplied.

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6. Saturation of Meaning

Humans Reach the Limits of Meaning Processing

When information becomes infinite,
the next phenomenon is:

meaning saturation.

Humans cannot process infinite information.

Time is finite.
Attention is finite.
Cognitive capacity is finite.

Therefore, the problem shifts from:

“lack of information”

to:

“lack of meaning-processing capacity.”

This accelerates the Attention Economy even further.

But in the AI era,
competition extends beyond mere attention acquisition.

A struggle over:

meaning itself

begins to emerge.

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7. AI Enters the “Meaning Layer”

What becomes important here is that:

AI is not merely an information-generation machine.

AI is increasingly beginning to perform:

meaning connection,
context generation,
interpretation assistance,
prioritization,
knowledge restructuring.

In other words, AI is entering:

the Meaning Layer.

This is an extremely important transformation.

Because human society fundamentally operates through:

shared meaning.

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8. From “Information” to “Intelligence”

Now we return to the core theme of this chapter.

Through generative AI,

the scarcity of information

is beginning to collapse.

Then what becomes valuable next?

It becomes:

what we consider important,
how we interpret,
how we connect,
how we decide,
how we coordinate.

In other words, the center of value is shifting from:

Information

to:

Intelligence.

And intelligence here does not simply mean IQ.

Rather, it means:

the ability to handle meaning.

What becomes especially important is this:

the more information increases,
the harder it becomes for society to determine:

“What should we trust?”
“With whom should we synchronize?”
“Which decisions should we follow?”

As information becomes infinite,

selection,
coordination,
interpretation,
and trust formation

become the real bottlenecks.

In other words, the AI era is no longer:

an era of information scarcity,

but:

an era of intelligence coordination.

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9. The New Scarce Resources of the AI Era

What truly becomes scarce in the AI era?

It is:

Trust.
Context.
Judgment.
Relationships.
Responsibility.
Coordination.
Meaning.

Because these cannot be generated through simple automation alone.

AI can mass-produce text.

But:

Who said it?
Why was that judgment made?
Who bears responsibility?
Within what relationships was it formed?

These cannot emerge through generation alone.

What becomes important from now on is no longer:

“How much do you know?”

but:

“How effectively can you circulate, connect, and coordinate intelligence?”

At this point, the center of the economy shifts from:

Goods.
Information.
Ownership.

toward:

Coordination.
Trust.
Knowledge Flow.
Decision Flow.

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10. The Entrance to the Intelligence Economy

At this stage, society begins moving beyond a simple information society.

What matters is no longer:

the amount of information generated.

Rather, what matters is:

who trusts what,
how decisions are made,
and how actions are connected.

Generative AI has made information itself massively producible.

But society does not move through information quantity alone.

What truly drives society is:

trust,
judgment,
coordination,
consensus,
responsibility,
and cooperation.

Thus the center of value is shifting from:

“ownership of information”

to:

“connection and circulation of intelligence.”

And intelligence here does not exist solely inside isolated individuals.

It emerges through structures of meaning formation and coordination among:

humans,
AI,
organizations,
agents,
and institutions.

In other words, the AI era represents a transition from:

the Information Economy

to:

the Intelligence Economy.

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Conclusion

AI Does Not Merely Multiply Information — It Multiplies Meaning

Through generative AI, humanity has entered:

the age of infinite information.

But the true issue is not the amount of information itself.

What truly matters is:

what meanings we choose to share within it.

AI is not merely an information-generation machine.

It is beginning to transform:

the meaning structure of society itself.

In the next chapter,
we will explore why this transformation is causing AI to enter:

the Decision Layer.