Forget about class solidification, a new "great divergence" has already arrived.

Introduction: "Class solidification", "it's hard for the poor to raise a rich child", "the middle class returning to poverty"... These phrases permeate the air in Chinese, becoming a form of collective anxiety. We are concerned about the invisible yet solid starting line, and we fear the sense of powerlessness in the era of "relying on one's father."

But what if I told you that we might be stockpiling the wrong ammunition for a war that has already ended? While people are still intensely debating the "class" of the old world, a more thorough and brutal era of "great divergence," driven by AI, has quietly begun.

This time, what measures a person's position is no longer wealth or background, but the dimensions of cognition, judgment, and creativity.

In the past decade, the most enduring topic on the Chinese internet has been "class stagnation." Countless articles, discussions, and memes have been narrating the same story: the ladder of social mobility is narrowing, and the value of personal effort appears pale and powerless in the face of the wealth and resources of previous generations.

From "I have struggled for eighteen years to sit down and have coffee with you" to the discussion of "Runxue", and then to the lament of the "vulnerability of the middle class" under the layoffs in large companies, this anxiety is real. It stems from the acute pain of an era dominated by resource stock competition.

We all seem to have accepted a default premise: the structure of the world is relatively stable, like a pyramid that has already been built. What we can do is to strive to climb within the established grid and pray not to slip. We calculate how many generations of accumulation it will take to establish a foothold in a first-tier city; we are anxious about how to pave the expensive track to elite education for the next generation.

However, we must be vigilant against a cognitive inertia—using past maps to navigate a brand new world. For while we are anxious about "solidification," an unprecedented technological force is accumulating energy deep within the Earth's crust, enough to reshape the entire landscape. This force is artificial intelligence.

AI is not another "Internet+", nor is it another round of technological innovation. It is a paradigm shift, a catalyst capable of dissolving existing social structures. What it is doing is making the very concept of "class" itself become precarious.

The new great divergence is accelerating.

Recently, Silicon Valley venture capital guru Paul Graham posted: "For a period of time, artificial intelligence will widen the gap in work returns. Average programmers are now finding it difficult to get a job, while top programmers are earning more than ever."

He also said: "This trend started in the Stone Age. Technological advancements always widen the gap in work returns. The income at the bottom can go to zero, while technology allows the income at the top to keep breaking through."

Take another look at this timeline depicting the development of human technology.

For millions of years, it was almost flat, then it began to rise after the Industrial Revolution, and now, that red line has suddenly turned into a vertical cliff. Behind this cliff is the crazy acceleration of technological evolution—changes that once took a century to digest can now be iterated in five years, or even in just one year.

This exponential power is forged by the twilight of Moore's Law and the dawn of the Law of Accelerating Returns, rendering all attempts at "solidification" futile.

In such a rapidly changing environment, those seemingly solid "class barriers"—whether based on capital, information asymmetry, or specific licenses that create moats—can be washed away overnight. The business of a century-old bank could be disrupted by a financial application built by a few genius programmers using AI; an education group that relies on a large number of teachers could be challenged by a platform that offers personalized AI tutoring.

The advantages of the old world are rapidly depreciating. When AI can generate legal documents, business contracts, code, and design drawings at almost zero cost, the traditional "middle-class" moats that rely on licenses and procedural knowledge are instantly filled in.

In the past, wealth could be inherited, but in this era, the understanding and mastery of AI cannot be directly inherited. A "rich second generation" who is numb and sluggish towards the new world may be far less competitive than a small-town exam taker who can skillfully use AI tools.

So, the key issue has changed. The core challenge we face is no longer how to climb up the rigid hierarchy, but how to cope with this brand new, massive diversion centered around "cognition" and "creation". To understand the rules of this diversion, it is necessary to look back at history, to listen to a tragic fable about the value of humanity amidst the roar of steam and steel.

Most are in a race that is doomed to lose

Let's look at a classic story. The story takes place in the 1870s after the American Civil War.

It was an era filled with pioneering spirit and iron will, with a vast railway network wildly spreading across the North American continent, piercing through mountains and filling valleys. In the rugged mountains of West Virginia, a railway company needed to carve out a mile-long curved tunnel.

In that era, quarrying and stone carving mainly relied on human power. The workers, mostly newly freed African Americans, challenged the hard rock inch by inch with heavy steel drills and hammers. The strongest among them were hailed as "steel drivers."

And John Henry is a legend among them. It is said that he stands two meters tall, has immense strength, and can wield a 14-pound hammer in each hand, swinging them alternately with unmatched efficiency and rhythm. His singing and the sound of his hammers create the most inspiring symphony on the tunnel construction site.

However, the product of the Industrial Revolution—the steam drill arrived at the construction site. This steel monster, tireless, devoured coal and water, emitting a deafening roar, promising to drill holes at a speed far exceeding that of human labor. The survival of the workers was directly threatened.

To defend the dignity and value of humanity, John Henry challenged this machine. This competition between man and machine captured everyone's attention. In the 35-minute contest, the steam drill burrowed 9 feet deep, while John Henry, with his extraordinary physique and will, swung his hammer, sweating profusely, astonishingly chiseled out a depth of 14 feet.

The crowd cheered as John Henry won the race. But just as he laid down his hammer, his heart burst, and he died from exhaustion. He proved with his life that humans can surpass machines at certain times, but his death also became a cruel parable: on a track defined by machines for efficiency, trying to surpass it with flesh and blood is, in itself, a tragedy destined to fail.

The reason John Henry's story has been passed down to this day is that it touches on an eternal theme: when the wave of technology comes, what is the value of the ordinary worker?

John Henry's mistake was in trying to compete with the steam engine in the dimension of "strength and endurance," which is precisely the core advantage of machines. He won a battle but lost the entire war. History quickly proved that the future's value does not belong to the stronger "steel drivers," but to those who can design, manufacture, maintain, and operate steam drills.

What truly defined that era were not the stronger workers like John Henry, but those who understood how to design, manufacture, deploy, and utilize steam drills—railroad tycoons, engineers, and inventors. They did not "race" against the machines; instead, they stood on the shoulders of the machines, gaining unprecedented leverage and reshaping the entire world.

Today, over a century later, we all stand at the crossroads of John Henry. Only now, the "steam drill" we face is the intangible artificial intelligence. What it challenges is no longer our muscles, but our minds.

Now, please look around. Artificial intelligence is the "cognitive steam engine" of our time. It is currently and will soon exhibit overwhelming advantages in the field of "medium-level" intellectual labor.

When AI can generate 100 "qualified" marketing copies in a minute, an ordinary copywriter, if only competing to "write faster and more," is just the John Henry of the new era.

When AI can instantly analyze tens of thousands of case studies and write legal summaries, a junior lawyer who only competes on "better memory and faster retrieval" is the John Henry of the new era.

When AI can generate countless "beautiful" designs based on instructions, a line artist who only competes in "technical skill" is also a John Henry of the new era.

Competing with AI on "efficiency" and "standard output" is a dead end. Because on this track, its progress is exponential, while ours is not. The essence of this competition is to "dehumanize" oneself to cater to the logic of machines, ultimately being ruthlessly discarded by them.

This is precisely the brutal starting point of the "Great Divergence": are you becoming a "better" beast of burden or machine, or are you becoming a "more unique" person?

The cost of mediocrity has never been so heavy, but the rewards of excellence have never been so rich.

AI is transforming the cognitive output of "average level" into a commodity that can be infinitely replicated at nearly zero cost.

When an AI model can provide "70-point" translations, "75-point" designs, and "80-point" code for free, the value of the "85-point" services provided by humans will plummet sharply. The market will no longer pay for "good" because it is almost free.

Your skills, if they can be clearly described, quantitatively assessed, and have a large number of successful cases for AI to learn from, are on the "commoditization" red line. This not only means a decrease in salary but also means a zeroing of value, indicating that you could be replaced by an API interface at any time.

This is the harshest punishment for being "average." In the past, being in the middle meant stability; in the future, the middle is collapsing.

However, while AI crushes the "average", it also provides an unprecedented amplifier for true "excellence". To understand how AI gives rise to "massive divergence", we must introduce another key social and economic theory: the Power Law (, also known as Pareto distribution or the 80/20 rule.

In simple terms, the power law states "Winner-Take-All." In a system that follows a power law distribution, a small number of top individuals occupy the vast majority of resources or returns. For example:

A small number of best-selling authors account for the majority of sales in the entire book market.

A small number of top celebrities have garnered the majority of income and attention in the entertainment industry.

A few internet giants (such as Google, Amazon) have captured the vast majority of profits in the market.

The emergence of AI is pushing the effects of the power law to the extreme, turning the gap between "winners" and "ordinary people" from a crack into an abyss-like canyon. There are three reasons for this:

1 Ultimate Scalability: Products from the industrial era, such as cars, are limited by physical constraints in their production and sales. In contrast, AI-driven software or services have almost no marginal cost. The core cost of a top-tier AI translation model serving 1,000 users versus 1 billion users increases insignificantly.

This means that as long as an AI product is 5% better than its competitors, it has the potential to quickly capture 95% or even 100% of the market through network effects and data flywheels. The survival space for the second and third place competitors is severely compressed, or even disappears.

2 Huge Leveraging Effect: AI is an unprecedented "capability amplifier." In the past, a top architect's influence was mainly limited to the projects he could personally participate in designing. Now, a top AI algorithm engineer can create an AI design tool that boosts the productivity of millions of junior designers around the world by ten times or even replaces them directly.

This engineer and his small team have leveraged AI to disrupt the value distribution of the entire industry. The immense value they create will be disproportionately returned to themselves.

3. The Complete Devaluation of "Average": This is the most brutal aspect of "mass diversion." The steam engines of the John Henry era replaced repetitive physical labor. The previous wave of software and the internet replaced repetitive, rule-based cognitive labor (such as calculations and data entry). And today, generative AI is tackling cognitive tasks that require a certain level of creativity at an unprecedented speed.

How to achieve excellence and amplify success in the era of AI

Excellence here does not refer to being 'better' than AI on a single dimension, but to the top human abilities that AI cannot touch.

1. The ability to define problems and unique insights: AI is a powerful tool for problem-solving, but it cannot independently identify a "worth solving" good problem. In business, scientific research, and the arts, the ability to penetrate the surface and perceive unmet needs, undiscovered patterns, and unexpressed emotions is the source that drives all value creation. If you can ask a question that AI cannot answer, yet is crucial, your value is limitless.

2. Ultimate aesthetics, taste, and creativity: AI can imitate Picasso, but it cannot become Picasso. It cannot possess the disruptive artistic intuition and unique life experiences that Picasso had. In content creation, product design, and brand shaping, that top-tier taste that can lead trends and define "beauty" and "style" will become the most scarce and valuable asset. Your work becomes invaluable because it is infused with your irreplaceable humanity, emotions, and worldview.

3. Cross-border integration and systems thinking: The deep learning capabilities of AI in vertical fields are astonishing, but innovatively connecting knowledge, resources, and talents from different domains to build a complex, brand-new value system remains a core capability of human entrepreneurs. Can you, like Steve Jobs, perfectly integrate technology, art, and business into a disruptive product? This systematic top-level design is something AI finds hard to reach.

4. Genuine Emotional Connection and Leadership: AI can simulate conversations, but it cannot establish true trust or provide heartfelt inspiration. Leading a team of top talents, inspiring their potential, and uniting them with a shared vision—this kind of leadership, grounded in deep empathy and the brilliance of humanity, will become the core engine driving organizations forward in the future of human-machine collaboration.

Individuals possessing these "extraordinary" abilities can leverage AI, an unprecedented tool, to amplify their influence by millions. A creator with a unique artistic style can use AI tools to complete an animation project in a day that would have taken a team a year. A researcher with groundbreaking scientific ideas can command an AI cluster to perform billions of simulations, verifying or refuting their theories at an unprecedented speed.

This is the reward of "excellence": you are no longer just yourself; you have become a "human + AI" super individual, and your thoughts can be directly transformed into the power to influence the world. This reward will no longer be linear, but explosive.

Everything solid will turn to dust.

Let's return to the initial anxiety. Yes, "class solidification" is a real dilemma in the industrial and information ages. However, in the future where AI is about to take over all "routine tasks," this issue is rapidly becoming outdated.

The rules of the old world are that where you are born largely determines how far you can go. The rules of the new world are that how you think determines whether you are falling in the stream or ascending.

This great bifurcation will mercilessly punish mediocrity and the average, generously rewarding excellence and outstanding performance; it will ruthlessly penalize lazy thinking and outdated skills, generously rewarding those who embrace change, commit to lifelong learning, and dedicate themselves to cultivating their unique "humanity." It gives everyone a chance to choose a new "starting line."

This new starting line is not about your parents' bank account, not about the location of your school district home, and not even about which prestigious school you graduated from. It is in your every morning, in the moment you open your phone and computer:

Do you choose to use AI to pass the time, complete repetitive tasks, and become a more efficient "gear"? Or do you choose to use AI to learn new knowledge, explore the unknown, and create unprecedented things, making yourself that unique "engine"?

Forget about the rigid social hierarchy; that wall we once desperately tried to climb may be dissolving in the tide of the times. What truly determines the future is the clearer and steeper fork in the road before you.

Are you continuing to stare anxiously at the crumbling old wall, or are you turning around to face the turbulent waves of AI and beginning to learn how to build your own ark?【懂】