Yesterday I saw this news and spilled half my coffee

Just saw AI crack a 200-year math problem in 3 hours — I froze for 3 seconds. We always think "this has nothing to do with me" — but this time it's different.

How big is this and who's already panicking

Last week OpenAI open-sourced 722 papers written by an internal math model, solving several problems that had puzzled humans for 100+ years. The result on the "quasi-Riemann hypothesis" was rated by insiders as "the biggest breakthrough in number theory in 200 years." The scariest part is how they did it — thousands of problems, each solved by ChatGPT Pro in an average of 3 hours.

My friend Xiaoli runs Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) content ops for clients in Guangzhou. She messaged me the second she saw the news: "Even mathematicians are losing their jobs to AI — how many years do my lifestyle copywriting gigs have left?" Lao Zhou in Hangzhou, who writes study-abroad application essays, was more blunt in our group chat: "I might need to switch careers."

We shouldn't just watch the show — if AI can finish in 3 hours what takes mathematicians months, the copywriting we write, the drafts we edit, the research we do — getting accelerated is only a matter of time. I'm not fear-mongering; this trend is already happening.

What you can do today

  • Cost: ChatGPT Pro subscription $20/month (~$145 RMB)
  • Time: 5 minutes to sign up
  • Tech barrier: if you can WeChat, you can do this
  • First step: open chatgpt.com → click "Get Plus" → throw in the task that's eating most of your time right now

I got stuck here too — kept thinking "let me first understand AI, then I'll use it," wasted an extra half-year doing things manually. I messed this one up: the sooner you let AI work for you, the sooner you get this acceleration.

Three pieces of advice by stage

If you're just starting out / still figuring out your direction: skipping AI for now is fine. But sign up for ChatGPT or Gemini's free tier and let it write 1 WeChat Moments caption per week. The goal isn't saving money — it's getting used to what AI output looks like.

If you already have 1-2 stable clients: treat ChatGPT Pro like an intern — research, first drafts, meeting notes. Use the saved time to take on one more gig or be with family. Designer Xiao Chen in Guangzhou subscribed to Pro and started picking up 2 extra freelance projects a week.

If you're already scaling / leading a 1-5 person team: seriously audit which tasks in your team are "repeatable work that can be automated." This news is a reminder — AI improves faster than you think. Don't wait until clients start asking "why aren't you using AI?" to move.