The Dilemma of Self-Media and the AI Paradox: The Truth That The Deeper the Dependence, the Lower the Sense of Value

Recently, a phenomenon worth pondering: why do those most proficient in AI tend to fall into the anxiety of “being replaced by technology”? This anxiety doesn’t come from tech novices but from self-media creators, programmers, analysts—those who have already mastered AI. They initially thought AI would make them superhuman, but instead, they find themselves sinking into a deeper sense of helplessness.

A recent statement by a medical expert inadvertently reveals the core paradox of this era. The expert explicitly stated that hospitals’ medical record systems should “refuse to introduce AI.” His reasoning seems conservative but is actually ingenious: if young doctors rely on AI for diagnosis from their first day of internship, they will permanently lose a critical skill—judging whether AI is making errors. Meanwhile, this expert himself extensively uses AI to review cases, backed by 30 years of clinical experience, allowing him to instantly identify AI’s flaws.

This is what is called the “Zhang Wenhong Paradox”: AI can do 80% of the work, but can the remaining 20% still prove your value?

Behind Elite Anxiety: Why AI Amplifies Your “Uselessness”

Where does this anxiety come from? Let’s look at some phenomena:

If an AI can generate a perfect due diligence report in minutes; if Gemini allows those without drawing skills to create master-level artworks; if GPT can “accurately” interpret medical examination results; if AI can complete a week’s worth of coding in minutes—then where is your remaining value?

Some say we are entering an “upskilling” era, but the truth is: AI hasn’t made skills obsolete; it has triggered a fierce “skill inflation.” Feeling “eliminated” may not be because AI is so powerful, but because it ruthlessly exposes a fact: many things you once took pride in are actually just “bricks”—execution, routine work, not genuine thinking.

In an era where execution costs approach zero, AI is like a mirror reflecting the true granularity of everyone’s thinking. Those anxious self-media creators and content workers are essentially asking: when the cost of transforming creativity into execution nearly disappears, what do I have that is truly irreplaceable?

This question points to a deeper truth: In the 21st century, skills are no longer about mastering tools but about possessing real cognitive leverage.

Your Prompts Always Fall Short? The Real Issue Is Clarity of Thought

Observe a phenomenon: some use AI to solve complex problems, others treat it merely as a chat tool. The difference isn’t in how many “magic spells” they know but in the clarity of their thinking.

A worrying trend has recently emerged: people are outsourcing thinking itself to AI. When faced with problems, they don’t decompose them but directly feed vague requirements into the model, then get frustrated at mediocre outputs: “This AI is useless!”

The truth is: AI is fundamentally a context-based prediction machine, and output quality is strictly constrained by input quality. This is the modern version of “Garbage In, Garbage Out” (GIGO).

Top self-media creators, programmers, analysts, before activating AI, have completed rigorous mental simulations:

Step 1: Problem Definition — What core contradiction am I solving?
Step 2: Logical Decomposition — What sub-tasks does this problem consist of, and what are their dependencies?
Step 3: Success Criteria — What results are considered acceptable?

For example, top self-media authors, before having AI generate content, have already established a unique conceptual framework; experienced engineers, before asking AI to generate code, have clarified data flows. Don’t expect AI to do “0 to 1” thinking—AI excels at expanding “1 to 100,” but that initial “1” must come from your brain.

If you can’t even explain your ideas clearly to colleagues, AI won’t save you. Clear expression equals clear thinking. In the future, natural language programming will become a universal skill, but this doesn’t mean programming gets easier—it’s that language and logical precision become the new code.

Knowledge vs. Understanding: Why Content Creators Are More Easily Overwhelmed by AI

This is a subtle dividing line.

AI training data comes from human historical accumulation, but because of this, it inherently has a major flaw: achieving mediocrity through consensus—returning to the mean. Ask AI about health, finance, history, and it will give you textbook answers—safe, correct, but extremely dull, because it merely repeats the most frequent information on the internet.

This introduces a third dimension: the ability to distinguish truth from falsehood.

• Knowledge = knowing “what should be done”
• Understanding = knowing “why it should be done and when not to do it”

This is the fundamental difference between the medical expert and the young doctor. The young doctor can instantly acquire “knowledge” via AI—diagnostic results, medication suggestions, treatment plans. But the expert possesses “understanding”: he knows the boundaries of this knowledge, when to break routine, and when AI’s “standard answers” are actually wrong.

In an age of information explosion, if you only acquire information through learning and algorithmic recommendations, you’re essentially in a giant echo chamber, mechanically repeating without truly understanding how things work.

To be smarter than AI, you must be closer to the essence of things than 99% of people. This means:

• Want to understand business? Don’t just read bestsellers and public accounts—study cash flow, leverage, supply and demand, and human greed
• Want to understand health? Don’t blindly trust so-called authoritative guidelines—explore metabolic, hormonal, inflammatory biological mechanisms

Only those who truly understand how systems operate can keenly spot the flaws in AI’s “standard advice” or boldly overturn AI’s conclusions in special cases.

This offers profound insight for content creators: Whether you can understand your field more deeply than your competitors determines whether you become the commander of content or just an executor of AI.

History will tell us the answer. In the 1980s, when computers emerged, accountants and lawyers panicked. Lawyers spent days searching through stacks of documents for a single precedent; electronic search reduced this to seconds. Will lawyers disappear? No. Instead, the legal industry became larger and more complex. As search became easier, client expectations rose—people no longer paid for “finding precedents” but for “building a unique defense system based on complex precedents.”

After AI takes over coding, copywriting, and primary diagnostics, the role of humans is also undergoing a fundamental shift.

Career Evolution: From “Bricklayer” to “Quality Inspector” — An Essential Lesson

In the long run, from the rhythm of history, we see a clear direction: we are evolving from “craftsmen” into “commanders,” from “performers” into “validators.”

In the past, a senior engineer might spend 50% of their time coding and 50% thinking about architecture. Now, they can spend 90% of their time designing architecture, understanding business, and optimizing user experience—leaving code generation to AI (while retaining final review).

This raises the ceiling of work complexity. Independent developers can now operate projects that previously required a ten-person team; knowledgeable self-media creators can produce in a day what used to take a week; senior doctors (like the expert) can manage an unimaginable number of patients with AI assistance.

This is the new definition of “skills” in the AI era: not one-dimensional expertise but multi-dimensional integration.

You don’t need to personally lay every brick, but you must understand structural mechanics, have aesthetic judgment to shape appearances, and possess business acumen to decide where to place the building for maximum value. This “macro control + micro validation” integrated ability is the true iron rice bowl in the AI age.

The two key abilities emphasized by the medical expert fundamentally point to this:

1. Micro Validation — Can you judge the accuracy of AI diagnoses?
2. Macro Control — Can you handle complex cases that AI cannot solve?

Doctors lacking these two skills are merely “AI operators.” The same logic applies to programmers, content creators, analysts—all professions requiring judgment.

Conclusion: Only by Upgrading Can You Enjoy the Thrill of Being Superseded

Returning to the initial phenomenon: why do you feel more devalued the more you use AI?

Because AI deprives you of the sense of achievement gained through manual labor. Reports polished over three days gave you a sense of accomplishment; now, AI generates them in three seconds, and that illusory self-worth instantly collapses.

It’s painful—but also awakening. AI pushes us to confront the hardest question: outside of mechanical execution, where does my intellectual value lie?

For those who refuse to think, this is the worst era. They will become mere appendages of algorithms, possibly never realizing they are being swallowed by mediocrity.

But for the curious, independent thinkers, eager to explore the essence of things, this is the greatest era in human history:

• All thresholds are lowered
• All ceilings are removed
• You now command the most powerful think tanks and execution teams, on standby 24/7

That medical expert isn’t against AI—instead, he opposes skipping foundational training and outsourcing thinking and metacognition directly to AI. He uses AI extensively because he has 30 years of internal cultivation as a foundation. For him, AI is an extension of his capabilities; for untrained doctors, AI might be “shortcutting growth”—seemingly easy, but actually leading to destruction.

In the 21st century, skills won’t disappear—they will undergo brutal purification. Don’t try to compete with AI in “solving problems”; instead, aim to surpass it in “defining problems.”

When you stop viewing AI as a tool to escape effort and start seeing it as a superlever requiring high intelligence to command, coordinate, and correct, what you see through AI will no longer be your mediocrity but an amplified, formidable version of yourself.