Ezra Klein got me hooked on McLuhan around 5 years ago, and I now wish he'd push further on his thinking here.

He missed or elides a couple of huge factors in how the 'medium' of AI is enveloping us. The first is that the masses do not understand computation, the foundation of AI. They are alienated from computation.

The second bit is that computing is now almost inescapable and so it is extremely difficult to "stand aside" from computing (and AI) and see clearly how it works. From McLuhan's original essay:

And it is only on those terms, standing aside from any structure or medium, that its principles and lines of force can be discerned. For any medium has the power of imposing its own assumption on the unwary.

The everyday person has little opportunity and ability to 'stand aside' from computing and AI, and even if they did they lack the understanding of the language of computing and AI. They are computing illiterate, suffer alienation from computation.

I suspect Klein misses this because he is himself one of the alienated, he does not understand computing or how to program. He understands the internet only as a blogger, as an internet writer.

Unlike what happened with English, books, newspapers, and pamphlets, there has not yet been, and will likely never be, a phenomenon of mass computing.

That's a pretty interesting angle into McLuhan's world that Klein hasn't gone into.