The AI era is polarizing: the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer.

Author: Jiayi Source: X, @mscryptojiayi

AI has changed our habits of living, and that’s a fact.

Using AI to write emails, create PowerPoint presentations, search for information, even craft social media posts—AI has become our natural companion, just like WiFi.

But few stop to ask: Are the AI tools you use the same as those others are using?

The Illusion of “Fairness” in the AI Era

Silicon Valley often tells a story: AI gives everyone a super assistant, knowledge is no longer a privilege of the few, and everyone is equal.

It sounds beautiful. But the truth is—AI is fundamentally unfair; it’s a competition of financial resources.

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

A single NVIDIA H100 chip costs over $25,000. Training a GPT-4 level model costs over a hundred million dollars. Every question you ask AI involves burning tokens—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 Perplexity, Cursor, Midjourney… a heavy AI user easily spends over $500 monthly on tools.

Some spend $5,000 a month building competitive barriers with AI; others think using the free ChatGPT version makes them up to date.

They’re not even on the same track. Not even playing the same game.

At the national level: Structural gaps are irreversible

This logic is even more brutal at the national level.

AI arms races require three things: chips, computing power, and talent—all of which demand huge capital.

The US controls over 70% of global AI computing power. China is catching up, but chip bans are choking it. As for most developing countries—among 46 emerging markets—entry-level broadband costs account for 40% of monthly income.

When a young person in Nigeria can’t even afford stable internet, what “AI equality” are we talking about?

94% of high-income countries have internet access, only 23% in low-income countries. 84% of high-income countries have 5G coverage, only 4% in low-income countries.

For third-world countries, the starting line in the AI era isn’t just a step behind—it’s outright ineligible to participate.

This structural gap cannot be closed through effort alone.

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

The same logic applies to each person.

I once wrote in my Twitter bio: Personal ceiling = Three views + Cognition + Practical ability.

What has AI done to these three?

First, AI has solved many efficiency problems in practice.

Where it used to take a week to produce an industry report, now it’s done in a day. Where coding from scratch was necessary, AI now helps you set up frameworks. In terms of efficiency, AI is indeed leveling the playing field.

But second, AI greatly amplifies cognitive gaps.

The same AI tool—what you ask, how you ask, whether you can judge if the AI’s answer is right or wrong—depends entirely on your existing level of cognition.

A person with deep understanding uses Claude for research, knows what questions to ask, how to follow up, and which answers need verification. AI saves him 80% of execution time, which he then spends on deeper thinking.

What about someone with shallow cognition? They ask questions, accept whatever AI gives, and move on. They stop thinking long-term. AI doesn’t make them smarter; it makes them lazier and dumber.

Third, the gap in delivery quality will widen.

Based on your existing cognition, the quality, depth, and real-time accuracy of AI outputs differ exponentially. Using Claude Opus, one person produces deep insights, while another produces superficial nonsense that looks convincing.

A study from Aalto University in Finland found that the more someone uses AI, the more they tend to overestimate their abilities. AI makes you “feel” stronger—outputs seem professional and smooth. But if you lack the ability to judge quality, you’re just producing “refined mediocrity.”

Thus, the gaps in worldview, cognition, and practical skills are magnified infinitely in the AI era.

The smarter you are, the deeper your cognition, and the wealthier you are, the greater the distance you can create with better tools. Conversely, those at the other end become lazier, shallower, and poorer under AI’s “help.”

Cost × Cognition: a double gap in the making

Here’s a chain many haven’t fully grasped:

Money determines what level of AI you can access → The level of AI determines the quality and depth of information you get → The quality of information defines your cognitive boundary → Your cognitive boundary influences your decision-making quality → Decision quality affects how much money you can make.

It’s a closed loop. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer.

The hallucination rate of the free ChatGPT is nearly 40%. That means, out of 10 questions, 4 answers are fabricated. Paid GPT-4 has a hallucination rate of 28%, and the latest version has dropped by 45%.

Decisions made with free versions versus those with Opus—over time, they lead to two completely different life paths.

Huge information gaps always exist. AI hasn’t eliminated them; it has turned them into paywalls.

The world of walls: different realities

A personal observation I find quite sad:

You’re probably reading this article because you can bypass the Great Firewall and browse Twitter.

But think—how many people around you cannot? When you talk to them, do you already feel your cognition is on a different level?

This isn’t about IQ. It’s the long-term cognitive divergence caused by different information environments.

One person consumes cutting-edge global information, deep discussions, and top content creators daily. Another sees algorithm-fed short videos and filtered feeds.

Over five or ten years, their ways of thinking, judgment, and worldview diverge completely.

The AI era amplifies this gap. Those who can bypass the firewall use Claude, Perplexity, and the best global AI tools. Those who can’t—ChatGPT is blocked in China, Claude is blocked, and they can only use localized substitutes or pay extra via middlemen.

The “walls” in the AI era aren’t just physical firewalls. There are language barriers—advanced AI models optimize far better in English than in other languages. There are paywalls. Algorithmic echo chambers. Every wall pushes people into different worlds.

Research from Stanford shows that non-English speakers need five times more tokens to consume the same content. That means, with the same money, they get less information and lower quality.

The most terrifying part: you’re already falling behind, but you don’t realize it

This is what I want to emphasize most in this article.

Free AI can answer questions, help you write, and assist in searches. So users of free AI think—“I’m using AI too, I’m not falling behind.”

But free versions have shallower reasoning, more hallucinations, and older information. The answers seem correct but are often misleading or wrong.

It’s like two people running—one genuinely moving forward, the other jogging in place on a treadmill. Both think they’re making progress, but only one actually is.

Psychology calls this the Dunning-Kruger effect: the less you know, the more you think you know. AI amplifies this effect tenfold—you rely more on AI, the more confident you become. But you’re losing the ability to think independently; you just don’t realize it.

That’s the cruelest part of the AI era.

It’s not that AI will replace you. It’s that those with better AI and deeper cognition will leave you far behind. And you might not even realize how you fell behind until it’s too late.