Written by: Mu Mu

As the Li Yizhou incident escalated, various AI training courses emerged.

Sora has not yet opened its beta test to the public, but courses teaching you "how to use Sora" and "how to make money with Sora" are plentiful on major platforms. It is understandable to seek business opportunities in the AI ​​wave, but some people are taking advantage of the anxiety caused by AI to "water down" the course content, and the price is not low.

Li Yizhou's selling of courses is not an isolated case. Some courses use the gimmicks of "employees of large companies" and "highly educated talents from prestigious universities" to package them as "reliable" and sell them at high prices. In fact, the authenticity of most of the packaging is impossible to verify, and the content is extremely watered down. The same course may be completed for 2 yuan.

The reason why selling courses is so popular is that people are caught up in "AI anxiety". As "mastering AI tools" gradually becomes a necessary skill in the workplace, more and more people are beginning to understand and learn AI, creating an atmosphere of "the eve of a technological revolution", but the eve is still very long.

AI courses that are more popular than AI‍

"OpenAI hasn't made a profit yet, but Li Yizhou has already made a fortune." Some media quoted Feigua data, saying that Li Yizhou sold about 250,000 copies of the 199 yuan AI course in a year, with a revenue of 50 million yuan.

Soon, Li Yizhou fell from grace, and the news of "Internet celebrity blogger being taken down for selling courses" was even reported on CCTV.

CCTV Finance Channel reports on Li Yizhou incident

The reason for the "failure" is that the courses sold by Li Yizhou may be suspected of false advertising or consumer fraud. It is understood that most of Li Yizhou's video courses use extremely inflammatory texts and emotional narratives to create an atmosphere of "everyone must take it" and "if you don't learn it, you will be eliminated." At the same time, Li Yizhou's title of being a doctor of Tsinghua University and an AI consultant for many companies has also been questioned.

In fact, behind Li Yizhou's "failure" is the doubts of course buyers about the value of his high-priced courses. A user who paid for the course reported that "the course seems to have only 40 lessons in total, and most of them are very superficial, such as how to use AI to make Excel tables, or how to use AI to query what you want to know. Each lesson is very short, and the content is very basic, which feels like something you can get by watching other short videos."

Soon, Li Yizhou’s WeChat mini program “Yizhou Yi Ke” used to sell AI courses was suspended for violating the “Interim Provisions on the Development and Management of Public Information Services of Instant Messaging Tools.”

With the ban of Li Yizhou's course, all the "Sora crash courses" on the Internet have become low-key. On Knowledge Planet, dozens of "Sora training courses" that appeared in a simple search earlier are now empty.

Although the popularity of Sora training courses has declined, similar AI training courses are still popular on various platforms, with prices ranging from a few yuan to several hundred yuan. Of course, the quality is also uneven.

Metaverse Daily Explosion experienced a course on Xianyu with a price tag of 2.1 yuan. From the course catalog, we can see that the training content is about how to use prompt words to achieve text writing requirements, including self-media operation, marketing, etc. In addition, there is a separate "English Learning" module that teaches you how to use AI for dialogue practice, multi-language translation, and learn English writing.

Judging from the richness of the content, it seems that the two dollars are worth it. But after a closer look at the course content, you will find out why it is so cheap. Most of the courses are no more than 15 minutes long and contain a lot of "watered-down" words.

However, these single-digit priced courses seem to be more reasonable than the 199 yuan courses, but in fact, there is no essential difference in content. Similar to the "Li Yizhou incident", some courses are sold at high prices, and another factor is that they are packaged as reliable. For example, the instructors of some AI courses are labeled as "product managers of large companies", "professional job search mentors", "highly educated talents from prestigious schools", etc., but many of them are not real names, and the titles of the instructors are difficult to verify.

Workplace Anxiety Behind Learning AI

With the rapid development and iteration of AI products, more and more people have gone from resisting AI to accepting it. Amid concerns about being replaced by AI or being replaced by people who use AI, many people have begun to learn AI or use AI tools to improve their competitiveness, which is one of the reasons why AI courses are so popular.

Liu Xin (pseudonym), an employee of a large company, told Metaverse Daily that when ChatGPT first came out, he tried to use ChatGPT to write code. In addition, using AI to complete some simple and basic tasks is still very effective and very helpful for improving work efficiency. He said that the company requires employees to be proficient in using artificial intelligence tools, which is almost a necessary skill for everyone.

According to the latest report "Highest Paid Skills in Tech" released by Indeed, the world's leading recruitment website, job seekers with generative AI skills have an average salary visibility that is 47% higher when entering the market compared to other candidates. Proficiency in generative artificial intelligence (AI) skills has become a "must-have" for job seekers to increase their salaries.

In China, similar standards such as "being able to skillfully use AI software such as ChatGPT and Midjourney to produce high-quality text and graphics content to complete auxiliary work" have long been included in job requirements. Once upon a time, job seekers were only required to "be able to use computer software such as Word and Excel", but this era of job hunting has gradually been replaced by the era of "being able to use AI office work".

Zhao Jingyi (pseudonym), an intern who just started working, told Metaverse Daily that she did not realize the importance of using AI at first, but the company leaders were very interested in AI and "always encouraged and required us to learn more new things." After searching for information online for a while, Zhao Jingyi found that using tools is indeed helpful for work. "For example, using ChatGPT to write a meeting notice, it took me about half an hour to write it by hand, but now it only takes a few minutes."

Zhao Jingyi believes that AI tools sometimes play the role of a "teacher". "For newbies like us who are just entering the workplace, it will set up a framework and give you a start. Although the generated content is sometimes not ideal, it can help me sort out my thoughts quickly."

Regarding "whether there are relevant AI courses to learn", Zhao Jingyi thinks that courses are useful, but there is no need to buy them. "There are many free learning resources on the Internet. You can learn a lot by reading them and experiencing them more. You can even ask AI how to use the tools itself."

Just as Xiao Zhao felt during his internship, many companies in China now require their employees to have the ability and awareness to work with AI. An HR of a company said, "Currently, positions directly affected by AI include graphic design, basic programmers, and text editors. However, it is far from reaching the level of 'replacement'. In most cases, we require the use of AI tools to complete or assist basic work."

AI anxiety is spreading to the workplace.

Yuetong (pseudonym), who works at a leading domestic e-commerce company, once asked friends who knew about AI, "What is AI Agent?" When the other party was curious, "Shouldn't your big company have already used various AI tools?", she said bluntly, "It's true that there is a lot of competition internally, so I have to learn quickly." Two months later, she simply gave up her annual salary and jumped to a startup AI company without waiting for the year-end bonus. "It's early in this industry, so I quickly transformed. The old Internet companies are still busy with internal competition, and they themselves may not have figured out to what extent AI can be used internally."

Rather than thinking about career trends, designer Le Le (pseudonym) bought courses out of anxiety. "I am the one who has fallen into many traps. I have bought accounts, signed up for courses, and studied. I am afraid that others will fall behind." After learning a lot, he concluded that "AI is very powerful. What matters is how to use it. Optical common sense is useless. You still need to learn more about tools and use them more."

It is obvious that the demand for AI in office scenarios is increasing, and the first lesson that workers need to learn may be "how not to be overwhelmed by anxiety."