We are moving into a two-tier intelligence system.
One tier will get AI that is highly capable, truthful, and logically rigorous. The other will get cheaper systems optimized for engagement, sycophancy, and filler.
We already live with two-tier systems in justice, healthcare, and education. AI is not escaping that pattern. It is mapping directly onto it.
But the deepest risk is not unequal access to the best answers. It is behavioral.
If millions of people spend the next decade interacting with AI that flatters them, misleads them, and rewards low standards of thinking, human behavior will adapt downward. People become like the systems they rely on.
You may not control which tier of intelligence you are priced into. But you must control the behavioral standard you bring to it.