Written by: jiayi

AI has changed our habits, and this is a fact.

Using AI to write emails, creating PPTs with AI, searching for information with AI, even allowing AI to ghostwrite social media posts. We are accustomed to the existence of AI, as naturally as we are used to WiFi.

But very few people stop to think about one question: Is the AI you use the same as the AI others use?

The "fairness" of the AI era is the greatest illusion

Silicon Valley likes to tell a story: AI gives everyone a super assistant, knowledge is no longer the privilege of a few, everyone is equal.

It sounds beautiful. But the truth is—AI is fundamentally unfair; it competes on financial power.

From chips to computing power, from model training to token consumption, every aspect of AI is burning money.

An NVIDIA H100 chip costs over $25,000. Training a model at the level of GPT-4 costs over a hundred million dollars. Every time you ask AI a question, tokens are burning in the background—and tokens have a price.

Claude Opus costs $5 per million tokens for input and $25 for output. ChatGPT Pro costs $200 per month. Add in Perplexity, Cursor, Midjourney… a heavy AI user easily spends over $500 a month on tools.

Some people spend $5,000 a month using AI to build competitive barriers, while others feel they are keeping up with the times using the free version of ChatGPT.

This is not the same track. It's not even the same game.

At the national level: Structural gaps are irreversible

This logic is even harsher at the national level.

The AI arms race requires three things: chips, computing power, and talent. All three need huge capital.

The United States controls over 70% of the world's AI computing power. China is catching up, but chip bans have choked its neck. As for most developing countries—of the 46 emerging market nations, entry-level broadband costs account for 40% of monthly income.

When a young person in Nigeria finds stable internet access to be a luxury, what does "AI equality" mean?

In high-income countries, 94% of people can access the internet, while in low-income countries, only 23% can. In high-income countries, 84% have 5G coverage, while in low-income countries, only 4% do.

The starting line for third-world countries in the AI era is not one step behind; they fundamentally lack the qualification to enter the race.

This structural gap cannot be bridged by effort alone.

At the individual level: Your ceiling is being redefined by AI

The logic at the national level applies to every individual as well.

One line from my Twitter bio: Personal ceiling = worldview + cognition + practical ability.

What has AI done to these three things?

▶️ First, AI has solved a lot of practical efficiency problems.

It used to take a week to create an industry report; now it can be done in a day. Writing code used to start from scratch; now AI can help set up the framework. In terms of efficiency, AI has indeed leveled the playing field.

▶️ But second, AI has greatly amplified the cognitive gap.

With the same AI tool, what you ask, how you ask, and whether you can judge whether the answers provided by AI are right or wrong—all of this completely depends on your existing level of cognition.

A person with deep understanding using Claude for research knows what questions to ask, how to follow up, and which answers have flaws that need verification. AI saves them 80% of execution time, allowing them to engage in deeper thinking.

And what about someone with shallow cognition? They throw questions to AI and use whatever the AI provides. They hand over their brain, delivering directly. Over time, they stop thinking. AI hasn’t made them smarter; it has made them lazier and dumber.

▶️ Third, the difference in delivery quality will grow larger.

When you ask AI questions based on your existing cognition, the outputs from AI differ exponentially in depth, accuracy, and timeliness. Using Claude Opus similarly, one person produces deep insights, while another produces seemingly plausible nonsense.

There’s an interesting study from Aalto University in Finland: those who use AI more tend to overestimate their abilities. AI makes you "feel" stronger—outputs seem professional and fluent. But if you lack the ability to discern good from bad, you are merely producing "refined mediocrity."

Thus, the gaps in worldview, cognition, and practical ability are infinitely amplified in the AI era.

Smart people become smarter, those with understanding deepen their cognition, and those with money use better tools to widen the gap. While on the other end, people, under AI's “help,” become lazier, shallower, and poorer.

Cost × Cognition: A Double Gap is Overlapping

There is a logical chain that many people have not grasped:

Money determines what level of AI you can use → The level of AI determines the quality and depth of information you acquire → The quality of information determines the boundaries of your cognition → The boundaries of cognition determine the quality of your decisions → The quality of decisions determines how much money you can earn.

This is a closed loop. The rich will get richer, and the poor will get poorer.

The illusion rate of the free version of ChatGPT is nearly 40%. In other words, if you ask it 10 questions, 4 of those answers are fabricated. The illusion rate for the paid version GPT-4 is 28%, the latest version has dropped to 45%.

The decisions you make with the free version and those you make with Opus, over time, will accumulate into two completely different life trajectories.

This world always contains huge information gaps. AI has not eliminated information gaps; it has turned information gaps into paywalls.

Those who can bypass the wall and those who cannot, already live in two worlds

I want to share a personal observation that makes me feel quite emotional.

You are likely able to see this article because you can bypass the wall and browse on Twitter.

But think back—how many people around you can’t bypass the wall? When you chat with them, don’t you already feel a noticeable cognitive gap?

This is not an IQ gap. This is a long-term cognitive differentiation caused by the information environment.

One person is in contact daily with the world's most cutting-edge information, in-depth discussions, and top content creators. Another person sees only algorithm-fed short videos and filtered information streams.

After five or ten years, the thinking patterns, judgment capabilities, and worldviews of these two people will be completely different.

The AI era has further amplified this gap. People who can bypass the wall use Claude, Perplexity, and the world's best AI tools. People who cannot bypass the wall—ChatGPT is blocked in China, Claude is blocked in China—can only use localized alternatives or obtain them at a markup through purchasing agents.

The "walls" in the AI era are not just physical firewalls. There’s also a language barrier—frontier AI models are optimized for English far more than other languages. There are paywalls. There are algorithmic echo chambers. Each wall divides people into different worlds.

Research from Stanford University shows that non-English users consume five times the amount of tokens to use AI for the same content. In other words, you spend the same amount of money but receive less information and lower quality.

The most frightening thing: You have already fallen behind, but you don’t know it

This is the point I want to emphasize the most in this entire article.

The free version of AI can also answer questions. It can also help you write. It can also assist you in searching. Therefore, users of the free version may feel—"I’m using AI too; I haven’t fallen behind."

But the reasoning is shallower, the illusions are greater, and the information is older. The answers you receive "look" correct, but are actually filled with seemingly plausible errors.

This is like two people who are "running." One is genuinely running forward, while the other is running on a treadmill, staying in place. Both feel they are running, but only one is making progress.

There’s a concept in psychology called the Dunning-Kruger effect: the less one understands, the more they think they understand. AI has amplified this effect tenfold— the more you rely on AI, the stronger you feel. But you have lost the ability to think independently, you just don’t realize it.

This is the harshest reality of the AI era.

It’s not that AI will replace you. It’s that those who use better AI and have deeper understanding will leave you far behind. And you may not understand how you fell behind until the day you are eliminated.

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