When AI Makes Everything Easy, What Is Our Last Moat?

Recently, Silicon Valley’s

venture capital circle has been completely blown up by an article.
It’s not Altman, not Musk, but Ivan Zhao, the founder of the world’s most rebellious unicorn, Notion, who wrote a 10,000-word long essay titled “Steam, Steel, and Infinite Minds.”

This article has sent chills down the spines of countless elites because it exposes a brutal truth: The intellectual labor we’re so proud of is facing the same fate as physical labor 200 years ago—complete devaluation, until it reaches zero.

Today, I’m not serving chicken soup; in just a few minutes, I’ll break down this priceless guide to future survival for you and explain it thoroughly.

First, you need to know who this person is.
Ivan Zhao isn’t the kind of Silicon Valley tech guy you imagine, full of growth hacks and willing to do anything for funding. He’s more like an artist and philosopher who accidentally wandered into the business world.

Ten years ago, when everyone was scrambling for users and burning money on promotions, he took Notion’s small team and hid in a Kyoto guesthouse, refusing investors’ money, even on the brink of bankruptcy, just to polish one question: What kind of tools do humans really need?
He admires not Zuckerberg, but Engelbart and Alan Kay. He believes software is an extension of thought, not just an efficiency tool.

The result? Notion achieved a $10 billion valuation with almost no marketing spend, relying on extreme aesthetics and user experience. He’s one of the rare people in this era who beats algorithms with taste and scale with quality.

So, when he says “skills are dead,” you’d better perk up your ears and listen.

I. From Muscle Leverage to Intellectual Leverage
In the article, Ivan presents an extremely grand historical perspective. Looking back at the Industrial Revolution 200 years ago, that was the era of steam and steel, solving the core problem of muscle scarcity.
Before that era, if you wanted to build a building or farm land, you had to rely on human labor or horsepower. After the steam engine appeared, one worker’s physical strength was amplified a thousandfold, making brute force worthless, and those who knew how to operate machines became the winners.

Now, we’re experiencing the revolution of “Infinite Minds.” This isn’t just a technological upgrade; it’s a species-level leap.
In the past, no matter how rich you were, you only had 24 hours in a day; your brain had limits no matter how fast it spun. You needed to hire 100 programmers, 50 designers, and 20 lawyers to expand your business. These people weren’t just expensive; they were hard to manage.
But with AI’s emergence, the marginal cost of intelligence approaches zero infinitely. What does that mean? It means that if you’re willing, you can instantly have a thousand “interns” with PhDs working for you 24/7.

Thinking and execution are no longer scarce resources; they’ve become infrastructure like tap water.
This is the most counterintuitive and painful part of the entire article: The education we’ve received since childhood teaches us “how to solve linear equations, how to write a Python script, how to polish a business email”—we trade these “skills” for salaries.
But in Ivan Zhao’s new world, “skills” become worthless because AI solves them 10,000 times better and 10,000 times cheaper than you.

The barriers to software development are disappearing. In the past, turning an idea into a product involved huge technical gaps: You needed to understand servers, databases, front-end, and back-end.
Now, ideas directly equal reality; that long execution process in between is compressed by AI into a single enter key.
The role of tools has changed: Tools used to be passive; now they’re active.
So, if you’re just a skilled craftsman, your survival space is being completely locked down.

II. When Everything Becomes Easy, What Becomes Expensive?
At this point, you’re probably panicking: If AI can do everything, what are humans supposed to do?
Ivan gives the ultimate answer, which is also the secret to Notion’s success: Taste.

When the cost of generating content is zero, junk content will flood everywhere. When everyone can use AI to make identical apps or write identical copy, where does scarcity shift to?
It shifts to judgment, to aesthetics, to the soul.
Ivan says the golden age of software development is just beginning because the limitations now aren’t technology, but imagination.

The top talents of the future aren’t those who code the fastest, but those who: Know what beauty is, deeply understand human needs, have a unique worldview, and can direct AI to realize it.
Technology is the accelerator, but taste is the steering wheel. Without taste, you’re just producing digital garbage at faster speeds.

III. So, How Can Ordinary People Get a Ticket on Board?
After hearing this, if your mindset is still stuck at “learn an AI tool to boost efficiency,” that’s too shallow. I’m giving you three specific, even somewhat counterintuitive action suggestions:

First, Quit Tactical Diligence and Start Strategic Dictatorship.
Stop taking pride in “doing it myself.” Start training your ability to command. Take your current work—whether writing reports or making graphics—first throw it to AI, then act as a picky client.
Learn to tell AI: “The logic here is off,” “The emotion there isn’t enough,” “This color scheme is too tacky”—your ability to nitpick is your future value.

Second, Wildly Boost Your Non-Technical Literacy.
Go read philosophy, learn psychology, visit art galleries, study history.
Because AI is trained on all past human data, it represents the average level. Only deep humanistic literacy can let you ask questions above average, giving you intuitions AI can’t simulate.
After thirty years of STEM dominance, it’s time for the humanities majors’ revenge—provided you’re a humanities major with depth.

Third, Be a Super Individual, Not a Super Cog.
Ivan says future companies might only have two people: One with infinite thinking, and a bunch of cloud-based AI agents.
Use this window period to try building your own product, your own service. You don’t need to know code, don’t need to assemble a team; as long as you have a brilliant idea and enough taste to polish it, you can create your own business empire in this era.

Friends, the Industrial Revolution turned people into machines in pursuit of efficiency; this AI revolution finally gives us the chance to turn people back into humans.

Ivan Zhao’s article isn’t doomsaying humanity; it’s liberating humanity.
From today on, don’t compete on who’s faster with their hands; compete on who’s more meticulous with their heart. Don’t compete on who remembers more; compete on who thinks deeper.
In this era of infinite minds, what limits your wealth isn’t your ability boundaries, but merely your barren imagination and your compromising mediocrity.
In this era, mediocrity is the greatest risk.