Notion CEO Ivan Zhao: AI is the next miracle material, and "Infinite Mind" will reshape the entire knowledge economy

Every era is defined by a type of “miracle material”(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 making its debut in the form of “Infinite Minds.” Notion co-founder and CEO Ivan Zhao (趙伊凡) points out in his latest article that history repeatedly proves one thing: those who truly master the key materials will define the shape of the entire era.

This long article titled “Steam, Steel, and Infinite Minds” has recently sparked lively discussion on social platform X, once again showcasing Zhao’s consistent depth of historical perspective and macro view.

From Carnegie to Silicon Valley: How Technology Is Rewriting the Nature of Work

In the mid-19th century, 60% of the American workforce was still farmers. Young Andrew Carnegie was running through muddy streets in Pittsburgh, serving as a telegraph messenger. No one could foresee that within two generations, 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, Zhao was running a software company in San Francisco, building tools for millions of knowledge workers. Although Silicon Valley discusses Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) every day, over 2 billion office workers worldwide still haven’t truly felt AI’s impact on their work. As organizations begin to adopt those “never-resting minds,” the core question becomes: what will future knowledge work look like?

Why the Future Always Comes in Disguise

Zhao quotes media theorist Marshall McLuhan, pointing out that humans always “drive toward the future through the rearview mirror.” Early telephone calls were as brief as telegrams, and early films were simply stage plays shot on camera. When new technology emerges, it often first imitates old forms.

The same is true for AI. The most popular current form of AI still resembles the old Google search box, just replaced with a chat interface. This is the awkward transitional period every technological shift experiences.

Personal-Level Changes: From Bicycles to Automobiles

At the top of the knowledge work pyramid, programmers were the first to feel the change. Zhao mentions that his co-founder Simon was once a typical “10x engineer,” but now he almost no longer writes code himself, instead coordinating three to four AI coding agents simultaneously. These agents are not just faster at input but can “think,” boosting his output by three or four times.

In the past, Steve Jobs likened personal computers to “mental bicycles.” But Zhao believes that knowledge workers have been riding bicycles on the information superhighway for decades. The emergence of AI agents allows a few to upgrade from riding bikes to driving cars.

Why Most Knowledge Work Still Cannot Be Amplified by AI

The problem is that knowledge work is far more fragmented and harder to verify than coding. Code context is usually concentrated in IDEs, repositories, and terminals, and can be quickly validated through testing; but general knowledge work is scattered across Slack, documents, dashboards, and human memory, lacking a unified context.

Furthermore, whether a strategy is correct or a project is well-managed is inherently difficult to quantify and verify. This makes it hard for AI to evolve as quickly as learning to code, leaving humans still as the “glue” in workflows.

Zhao uses the 19th-century UK “Red Flag Act” as an analogy, pointing out that not all “human-in-the-loop” designs are ideal. The truly ideal scenario is to have humans supervise at higher levels rather than intervene item by item.

The Limits of Organizations Are Being Broken Through by AI Like Steel

Organizations themselves are a relatively recent invention. From early workshops of a dozen people to today’s multinational corporations with hundreds of thousands, larger organizations have higher communication costs and internal friction. Meetings, processes, and hierarchies have become makeshift solutions to industrial-scale problems using human-scale tools.

Zhao compares AI to “the steel of organizations.” Just as steel frameworks liberated load-bearing walls, AI has the potential to shoulder the burden of context and coordination, freeing humans from being the sole structural pillars of organizations. An alignment meeting that takes two hours might become a five-minute asynchronous review; decisions requiring multiple approvals could be completed in just a few minutes.

We Are Still in the “Water Wheel to Steam” Stage

In the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, factories simply replaced water wheels with steam engines. The real leap in productivity came from redesigning entire factories and rethinking site selection. Zhao believes AI is at the same stage today, mostly just “added” onto existing tools.

Within Notion, this future has already begun to be experimented with. Besides about 1,000 employees, the company has over 700 AI agents responsible for meeting notes, IT requests, feedback aggregation, and onboarding processes. For him, this is just the beginning; the real limitations are not technological but imagination and inertia.

From Florence to Tokyo: The Knowledge Economy Is About to Urbanize

Steel and steam not only changed factories but also reshaped cities. Renaissance Florence was a city operating on a walking scale; today’s Tokyo, Chongqing, or Dallas are entirely different lifestyles.

Zhao believes that the knowledge economy is standing at the same turning point. When AI agents go live at scale, organizations will operate like massive metropolises—across time zones, nonstop, with rhythms entirely different. The process may be confusing, but it will also unleash unprecedented scale and freedom.

This article “Notion CEO Zhao Ivan: AI Is the Next Miracle Material, ‘Infinite Minds’ Will Reshape the Entire Knowledge Economy” first appeared on Chain News ABMedia.