It feels somewhat analogous to the calculator, except a million times more impactful because of the breadth of fields it can apply to. The times I go to a minimart type place and cashier laboriously, and slowly, whips out a calculator to determine how much change to give when paid 100 for a 32 cost item. Now imagine that analog generalized to basic knowledge and competence itself.
It's kind of ironic because each one of these steps forward towards making knowledge egalitarian tends to do the exact opposite. Same thing with the internet which was going to democratize knowledge, information, education and more. And indeed it absolutely has, but 99% of people don't take advantage of it - so the 1% just pull that many orders of magnitude further ahead.
This perspective or line of argumentation does strike an intuitive chord with me.
There is a difference between being able to leverage AI to accomplish more than without it, and merely outsourcing intelligence and knowledge to the AI and effectively becoming complacent (which as you say, the 99% will end up doing).
My bet is on AI causing equality to worsen, unless there is a major political will to counter this with policy.
IMO such policies will need to provide both carrot (equalizing measures) and stick (lessening the options for the 99% to become complacent).
EDIT:
There is a third route that could play out. Leveraging AI or “teaming up” could be equivalent to a faustian pact, because of the nonzero possibility of AI to develop their own goals and agency.
It's kind of ironic because each one of these steps forward towards making knowledge egalitarian tends to do the exact opposite. Same thing with the internet which was going to democratize knowledge, information, education and more. And indeed it absolutely has, but 99% of people don't take advantage of it - so the 1% just pull that many orders of magnitude further ahead.