From encyclopedias to AI: How knowledge is changing the way we work

For most of human history, knowledge wasn’t something you could access instantly. It was scarce, slow to move, and often held by institutions built to store and interpret it. Universities, libraries, and professional guilds played that role for generations. If you wanted to learn something, you turned to a trusted source—such as a teacher, a textbook, or an encyclopedia—and worked through it over time.

The times today are very different. The shift from encyclopedias to artificial intelligence isn’t just a technology upgrade, it’s a fundamental change in how we interact with knowledge. It’s reshaping how we work, how organizations operate, and how opportunity gets distributed. That’s why AI is becoming such a defining force in this next chapter of work and life.

The evolution of knowledge tools

If you look back, there’s a clear progression in how we access knowledge. In the encyclopedia era, information was static and curated. It was reliable, but finding and interpreting it took time.

The search engine era changed speed and access. You could type a question and get thousands of results instantly but the responsibility still sat with the individual to evaluate, synthesize, and decide the relevance.

Then came the platform and data era. Software organized information into dashboards and workflows, giving people real-time visibility. Decisions became more informed, but humans still had to interpret the data and turn it into action.

Now we’re entering the AI era. These systems not only retrieve information but also help make sense of it, including analyzing, summarizing and, increasingly, doing. Instead of spending hours searching, you can ask a question and get a structured answer, a recommendation, or even a draft of the work.

Across these stages, the role of the individual has evolved from being a researcher to a navigator to a data-driven decision-maker, and now to a director of intelligent systems. It’s been a subtle shift, but an extraordinary one in terms of how work gets done.

What this means for work

Healthcare is a good example of this shift, especially given how high the stakes are.

Not long ago, physicians relied on training, textbooks, and journals. As information and knowledge expanded, staying current required a significant investment of their time. While the internet made information more accessible, it also made it more overwhelming. Doctors still had to sift through large volumes of information to find what mattered.

Electronic health records centralized data and added digital support, though this digitization also introduced an administrative burden that often pulled physicians away from patients.

AI has the potential to reverse all of that. Clinical copilots can summarize histories, identify patterns, suggest diagnoses, and handle documentation in the background. When this works well, it gives physicians back what they value most: their time and attention to focus on judgment, trust, and patient care.

More broadly, this shift is about more than just productivity gains. When people spend less time on tasks that drain them and more time on parts of their work that require human judgment and connection, work becomes more meaningful. It brings them closer to why they chose their profession in the first place.

This isn’t just a nice idea, it shows up in the data. The HP Work Relationship Index finds that, when people have access to the right tools and technology, they’re five times more likely to have a healthy relationship with work, and 69% say they’re excited about how technology will improve their work experience.

The rise of the individual enterprise

One of the most interesting aspects of AI is how it expands what an individual can do. Historically, organizations existed to bring together different types of expertise. Complex work required teams of people with varied backgrounds, such as analysts, researchers, and operators, because no one person had all the capabilities and expertise.

AI lowers that barrier. People can now access tools that support research, analysis, writing, planning, and execution. In many ways, it allows all of us to operate more like small enterprises, supported by intelligent systems.

You can see this in practice. A physician can reduce administrative time and spend more time with patients. A small-business owner can run marketing and analytics without a large team. An entrepreneur can launch and scale with far less infrastructure.

The productivity gains are enormous, but just as important is the sense of agency this creates. People have more control over how they work, what they focus on, and how they bring ideas to life. And with that comes a greater sense of ownership and fulfillment in the work itself.

Implications for society

When access to knowledge changes, opportunity tends to follow.

The printing press expanded literacy.
The internet expanded information.
AI has the potential to expand expertise.

For the first time, people almost anywhere can access capabilities once limited to large organizations. That’s powerful—but the benefits won’t be evenly distributed.

AI will likely widen the gap between those who learn to use these tools well and those who don’t. Skills such as judgment, creativity, communication, and ethical reasoning will become even more important as information is easier to generate.

Today, that gap is already emerging. While nearly half of business leaders report using AI tools daily, only about a quarter of knowledge workers do. Access and adoption will be just as important as the technology itself.

Education will need to adapt. The focus can’t just be on memorization. It needs to shift toward problem-solving, critical thinking, and learning how to work alongside intelligent systems. It becomes less about what you know and more about how you apply it.

The human element

With all the attention on AI, it’s easy to lose sight of something simple: technology works best when it supports people, not replaces them.

AI can process information faster and at greater scale than humans can. It can surface insights we might miss. But it doesn’t build trust, show empathy, or navigate complex human situations with judgment and care. Those remain uniquely human strengths and they matter even more in this environment.

What this shift really changes is where we spend our time. Instead of focusing on finding and organizing information, we can focus more on understanding it, applying it, and making better decisions.

If we navigate this thoughtfully, AI can make people more capable, organizations more effective, and society more innovative. It can also make work more fulfilling, giving people greater agency, more room to focus on what matters, and a stronger connection to the impact they have. The tools are changing, but the goal isn’t. It’s still about expanding what people can do and what we can achieve together.

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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com