The true sign of intelligence is deceptively simple: getting what you want. Not knowing things, not memorizing syntax, not passing interviews — getting what you want. Everything else is decoration.
There are only three layers that matter. First: input. Understanding the world, building a mental model of it, then compressing that model into intent — clear expression, precise formulation, effective communication. This is the hardest part and always has been. Before you can tell anyone or anything what to build, you need to understand what's worth building, why it matters, and how it fits into reality. Most people skip this entirely. They jump straight to execution because thinking is uncomfortable and formulating thoughts is harder than typing code.
Second: the middle layer. Execution. The part where AI, humans, workers, professionals — doesn't matter what you call them or what they are — take the communicated intent and produce output. This layer used to be where all the money went. Entire industries existed to staff it. Armies of engineers, consultants, agencies, contractors, all billing hourly to sit in the middle and translate input into output. This layer is now worth exactly zero dollars. AI does it faster, cheaper, and increasingly better. The middle layer was never intelligence — it was labor dressed up as expertise.
Third: judgement. The output arrives — now what? Is this what was intended? Is the quality right? Does it actually solve the problem or just look like it does? Curation, quality control, taste. Knowing the difference between "technically correct" and "actually good." This is where most people fail even harder than at input, because judgement requires the same mental model that input required — you need to understand what you wanted in order to evaluate whether you got it. If you can't formulate the question, you definitely can't judge the answer.
So intelligence reduces to two bookends: expression and judgement. Input and curation. Everything in between — the entire middle layer that corporations spent decades hiring, training, managing, promoting, and overpaying — has a market value converging on zero. The person who can articulate what they want and recognize when they've gotten it is the only one who matters. Everyone else was always just an expensive wire connecting the plug to the socket.
This is why most "senior engineers" are panicking without understanding why. Their entire career was the middle layer. They were the execution. They translated vague requirements into working code — and felt important doing it. But they never formulated the intent and they never had the taste to judge the output beyond "it compiles." They were the wire. And the wire just got replaced by something that costs pennies per request.