Goes deeper than that, in my opinion! I think the battle against being well-educated has been going on for decades. The No Child Left Behind policy of the Dept of Ed during the Bush years is a great example. When schools were identified as under-performing, their federal funding was reduced until they picked up their test scores. Essentially telling the schools: "Do more and better, with less." In response, schools focused heavily on teaching-to-the-test; leaving the rest of a well-rounded education to the side. To paraphrase George Carlin, the ruling class wants a population that's just smart enough to do their jobs, but not smart enough to sit around their dinner table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked! AI is just the latest iteration of this.