So true about the last part! Over my last 8 years, I've learnt that to grow in the company and have a good position, you need to be a rock for at least 1 core area the company works in. Like you said, "become a knowledge source, a reference"
I'm sure there are various tools out there that can help with that, saving time is crucial nowadays.
Shameless plug as excitingly I'm working on a tool https://designpro.ai which converts input from various sources into insights and tasks. I've used it to generate insights from my call transcripts, so I do know that it does work.
Let the humans use the internet however they want to, and now it's the age of AI, so let humans do whatever they want using AI.
I don't have the answers or a remediation plan for this. But could see this coming eons ago.
And the future is only going to get darker from here. May God help us!