My neighbor works at a multinational corporation, and I chatted with her over the weekend. She mentioned that the company is preparing for layoffs.

There were also recent rumors that Meta is planning aggressive layoffs of 20%, affecting over 10,000 employees.

The reason for the layoffs is that AI expenditures have driven up costs, making it necessary to reduce labor expenses. At the same time, AI applications have also increased productivity, so they don't need as many people.

By extension: it's estimated that Microsoft and others will also conduct layoffs, and domestic tech giants will likely experience more or less of an AI-driven layoff wave.

The AI era has two characteristics:

One is that the value of senior talent has increased dramatically, creating numerous young millionaires and billionaires earning astronomical salaries.

The other is that computing power consumption is extremely high—computing power is worth more than manpower.

The extra costs from both of these will almost entirely come from cutting large numbers of ordinary positions, because AI will replace a massive number of mediocre and useless jobs.

For most ordinary people, the former comes down to whether your children have exceptional talents—if so, cultivate them aggressively. I believe the core focus should be on mathematical thinking. AI is essentially mathematics + data + algorithms.

I'm not suggesting learning programming; programmers who only know how to code without real thinking will be the first to be optimized away by AI.

Moreover, demand for higher education will increase in the future. From an employer's perspective, since most new skills can be taught by AI, they need to hire someone with strong learning ability.

The learning ability of highly educated people has been validated through the college entrance exam, and they're easier to train, with twice the results for half the effort.

Most people claiming that education is useless in the AI era haven't considered this point. However, it's true that degrees from ordinary schools will continue to depreciate in the AI era, which is also the cruel reality of the future.