There is a game in the TV programme Gladiators called Everest.
Two people stand on a narrow elevated platform. One is the Gladiator. The other is the competitor. Their objective is simple: force the other person off balance and off the edge.
But the most interesting part of the game is not the pushing.
It is the platform itself.
Because the platform tilts.
At one moment, the angle favours the competitor. Moments later, it shifts back toward the Gladiator. Balance changes. Leverage changes. Confidence changes. The terrain itself becomes part of the contest.
Watching it recently, it felt like an unexpectedly accurate metaphor for what is happening in society as artificial intelligence emerges.
For decades, the platform tilted overwhelmingly in favour of institutions.
Large financial firms.
Banks.
Asset managers.
Governments.
Insurance companies.
Technology giants.
Regulatory ecosystems.
Not necessarily because they possessed greater wisdom — but because they possessed greater informational advantage.
They controlled:
- the research,
- the expertise,
- the legal interpretation,
- the analytical capability,
- the data infrastructure,
- the operational systems,
- and the distribution channels.
Ordinary individuals did not.
This created what economists and behavioural scientists call information asymmetry — a structural imbalance where one side consistently knows more than the other.
That asymmetry shaped modern economic life.
Consumers entered contracts they did not fully understand.
Small businesses negotiated from weaker informational positions.
Financial planning became increasingly industrialised around product distribution and institutional systems.
Even many professionals became dependent on vertically integrated technology stacks they could not fully interrogate themselves.
The platform tilted.
And for many years, the tilt remained stable.
But AI is beginning to change the angle beneath everyone’s feet.
This week, executives at SS&C Technologies openly acknowledged one of the defining problems facing the wealth and asset management sector: legacy systems are slowing AI transformation across the industry.
That admission matters.
Because it reveals something deeper than a technology problem.
It reveals that many institutions are structurally heavy.
Over decades, they accumulated:
- disconnected databases,
- siloed departments,
- overlapping systems,
- governance layers,
- compliance processes,
- acquisitions,
- operational complexity,
- and technical debt.
As a result, implementing AI inside large organisations is often less like innovation and more like attempting open-heart surgery on a moving ship.
Meanwhile, individuals operate very differently.
A single person with:
- ChatGPT,
- Claude,
- open-source tools,
- API access,
- curiosity,
- and disciplined thinking,
can now perform forms of analysis that previously required teams of specialists.
The implications are profound.
For most of modern history, institutions dominated because information was expensive:
- expensive to gather,
- expensive to process,
- expensive to interpret,
- and expensive to distribute.
AI compresses those costs dramatically.
An individual can now:
- analyse a contract,
- compare financial propositions,
- interrogate legislation,
- structure evidence,
- summarise technical documents,
- challenge assumptions,
- model scenarios,
- and learn complex subjects interactively,
without needing immediate access to institutional infrastructure.
That does not mean institutions disappear.
Nor does it mean expertise becomes irrelevant.
Institutions still possess enormous advantages:
- capital,
- regulation,
- legal authority,
- operational scale,
- distribution power,
- and established trust infrastructure.
But something important is changing:
the monopoly on cognitive leverage is weakening.
And that changes the balance of power.
Interestingly, many institutions appear to sense this already.
You can hear it in the language increasingly used across financial services:
- “governance,”
- “operational resilience,”
- “workflow orchestration,”
- “AI integration,”
- “data accessibility,”
- “risk frameworks.”
Underneath these discussions sits a quieter reality:
the public is becoming cognitively augmented faster than institutions are becoming structurally adaptive.
That creates tension.
Because individuals have very little legacy infrastructure to defend.
A person can adopt a new AI workflow this afternoon.
A multinational institution may require:
- steering committees,
- procurement cycles,
- risk reviews,
- compliance sign-offs,
- data mapping,
- integration projects,
- and board approvals.
The difference in adaptability is enormous.
And this matters particularly in sectors historically dependent upon informational asymmetry.
Financial services is one of them.
For years, many business models relied — consciously or unconsciously — on the public not fully understanding complexity.
AI begins to weaken that dependency.
Not because AI makes everyone an expert.
But because AI dramatically lowers the cost of becoming informed.
At the Academy of Life Planning, we increasingly see the future not as a battle between humans and machines, but as a contest between institutional inertia and human adaptability.
The real disruption may not be AI replacing humans.
It may be AI restoring capability to humans.
That distinction matters.
Because capability changes psychology.
When people feel capable:
- they ask better questions,
- challenge weak assumptions,
- negotiate differently,
- organise themselves more effectively,
- and become less dependent on opaque systems.
In that sense, AI may become less a tool of automation and more a tool of restored agency.
Of course, there are risks.
AI can mislead.
It can hallucinate.
It can amplify noise and manipulation.
It can create false confidence.
Wisdom, ethics, judgement, and discernment remain essential.
But even with those caveats, the direction of travel appears increasingly clear:
information asymmetry is beginning to erode.
And as it erodes, the platform tilts.
Perhaps that is the deeper significance of this moment.
Not simply that AI is becoming more powerful.
But that ordinary individuals may, for the first time in generations, be regaining meaningful access to cognitive leverage previously concentrated inside institutions.
In Everest, victory often belongs to the person who recognises the changing terrain fastest.
Society may now be entering a similar phase.
The platform is moving beneath all of us.
Academy of Life Planning 