Every era is defined by a "miracle material." The Gilded Age of the 19th century belonged to steel, the digital revolution of the 20th century came from semiconductors, and now, artificial intelligence is emerging as "infinite minds." In his latest article, Notion co-founder and CEO Ivan Zhao points out that history repeatedly proves one thing: those who truly master the key materials will define the shape of an entire era.
This lengthy article, titled "Steam, Steel, and Infinite Minds," recently sparked heated discussions on the social media platform X, once again showcasing Zhao Yifan's consistent strengths in historical depth and macro perspective.
From Carnegie to Silicon Valley: How Technology is Reshaping the Nature of Work
In the mid-19th century, 60% of the American workforce were still farmers. As a young Andrew Carnegie, he worked as a telegraph messenger on the muddy streets of Pittsburgh. No one could have foreseen that just two generations later, railroads would replace horse-drawn carriages, electric lights would dispel candlelight, steel would replace pig iron, and the modern world would take shape.
More than a century later, Yifan Zhao runs a software company in San Francisco, creating tools for millions of knowledge workers. Despite daily discussions of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) in Silicon Valley, the more than 2 billion desk workers worldwide have yet to truly feel the impact of AI on their work. His core question is: what will the future of knowledge work look like as organizations begin to absorb those "never-resting minds"?
Why does the future always come dressed in the guise of the past?
Zhao Yifan, citing media theorist Marshall McLuhan, points out that humanity always "drives into the future through the rearview mirror." Early telephone calls were as brief as telegrams, and early films were simply filmed versions of stage plays. When new technologies emerge, they often imitate old forms first.
The same applies to AI. The most popular form of AI today still resembles the old Google search box, only with a chat interface. This is precisely the awkward transition period that every technological shift goes through.
The shift in personal status: from bicycles to cars
At the top of the knowledge work pyramid, programmers are the first to feel the changes. Zhao Yifan mentioned that his co-founder Simon was once a typical "10x engineer," but now he almost never writes code himself, instead managing three to four AI coding agents simultaneously. These agents are not only faster at inputting, but they are also able to "think," increasing his output by three or four times or more.
In the past, Steve Jobs likened personal computers to "mental bicycles." But Zhao Yifan believes that knowledge workers have been cycling on the information superhighway for decades. The emergence of AI agents allows a minority to upgrade from cycling to driving.
Why is it still difficult for most knowledge-based jobs to be amplified by AI?
The problem is that knowledge work is far more fragmented and difficult to verify than writing code. The context of code is usually concentrated in IDEs, libraries, and terminals, and can be quickly verified through testing; but knowledge work is generally scattered in Slack, files, dashboards, and human memory, lacking a unified framework.
Furthermore, whether a strategy is correct and a project is well-managed are inherently difficult to quantify and verify. This makes it difficult for AI to evolve as rapidly as it does when learning to write code, and humans are still forced to become the "glue" in the workflow.
Zhao Yifan used the 19th-century British Red Flag Act as an analogy, pointing out that not all designs where "humans are in the loop" are ideal. The truly ideal situation is for humans to supervise at a higher level, rather than intervening step by step.
The limits of organizations are being broken by AI like steel.
The company itself is actually a relatively recent invention. From early workshops with a dozen or so people to today's multinational corporations with hundreds of thousands of employees, the larger the organization, the higher the communication costs and internal friction. Meetings, processes, and hierarchies have become expedient measures to deal with industrial-scale problems using human-scale tools.
Zhao Yifan likens AI to "the steel of an organization." Just as a steel frame structure liberates load-bearing walls, AI has the potential to shoulder the burden of context and coordination, so that humans are no longer the sole structural pillars of an organization. A two-hour alignment meeting may become a five-minute asynchronous review; decisions that require layers of approval may be completed in just a few minutes.
We are still at the stage of "changing waterwheels for steam".
In the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, factories simply replaced waterwheels with steam engines; the real leap in productivity came from redesigning the entire factory and its site selection logic. Zhao Yifan believes that AI is currently at a similar stage, mostly being "added" to existing tools.
Within Notion, this future has already begun to be tested. In addition to approximately 1,000 employees, the company has over 700 AI agents responsible for meeting minutes, IT requests, feedback aggregation, and new employee onboarding processes. For him, this is just the beginning; the real limitation is not technology, but imagination and inertia.
From Florence to Tokyo: The Knowledge Economy Is About to Be Urbanized
Steel and steam not only transformed factories, but also reshaped cities. Renaissance Florence was a city that operated on a walk-on scale; while today's Tokyo, Chongqing, or Dallas represent entirely different lifestyles.
Zhao Yifan believes that the knowledge economy is standing at a similar turning point. When AI agents are deployed on a large scale, organizations will operate like megacities, spanning time zones, operating without interruption, and at entirely different paces. The process may be disorienting, but it will also unleash unprecedented scale and freedom.
This article, "Notion CEO Zhao Yifan: AI is the next miracle material, and 'infinite mind' will reshape the entire knowledge economy," first appeared on ABMedia ABMedia .
