The Zeroth World Has Already Started Filtering People

JIC · WangDou · 2026.05

What standard will the future ten million need to meet?

01 · That Jarring Concept from Davos

At Davos 2026, Dario Amodei floated a very jarring concept — the Zeroth World Country, literally "the Zeroth World."

Note: it isn't a tier even lower than the "Third World." Quite the opposite.

In computing and math, indexing starts at 0. array[0] isn't the last element — it's the first.

So the Zeroth World isn't the bottom layer. It's a new top layer abstracted out from above the First World.

It might consist of around ten million people. Some concentrated in the Bay Area, others scattered across the world's most cutting-edge networks of AI, capital, startups, research, creators, and automated production.

The outside world might grow 3%, 5%, 10%. Inside the Zeroth World, it might be 30%, 50%, or even higher.

This isn't ordinary wealth inequality. This is a gap in the speed of civilization.

What's worse: past technological revolutions created new jobs, new industries, a new middle class. But this time, AI may no longer need that many people in production.

That's the nightmare Dario described — high GDP growth, high unemployment, high inequality.

The total economy gets bigger, but most people may not get a share. Because the conveyor belt that used to connect "tech dividends" to "mass income" may have snapped.

02 · The Anthropological First Principle: Why This Tool Revolution "Tore" Civilization Apart

From an anthropological view, the human animal has never been defined as "the one who thinks," but as "the one who makes tools" — Latin Homo faber. Every great tool revolution — stone, bronze, iron, steam, electricity — has re-sorted human classes.

But one iron law had never been broken: no matter how the classes split, everyone still sat within the same exchange network. The manor lord needed serfs to farm, the factory owner needed workers to run machines, Wall Street needed the global supply chain to provide physical collateral for its financial games. There was "asymmetric dependence" between upstream and downstream — but it was, in the end, mutual dependence.

What's different this time is that AI, for the first time, could let the people at the top no longer need the downstream. A 7-million-person Bay Area paired with hundreds of millions of AI agents could, in theory, self-circulate its knowledge output, software supply, R&D capacity — even (once paired with robots) physical execution.

It's like a tribe suddenly learning to speak to the gods directly, without the priests — the priestly class isn't oppressed, it's rendered irrelevant. The anthropologist Marshall Sahlins spoke of "structural irrelevance." That is far more terrifying than exploitation.

The exploited are at least still in the system; the irrelevant are forgotten by it. The reason Dario's nightmare chills people is, at root, this:

It's not 99% being squeezed by 1% — it's 1% simply erasing the 99% off the map.

03 · What the Zeroth World Actually Is: A New Human Operating System

The Zeroth World isn't a country, isn't a class, and certainly isn't a group of rich people. It's more like a new human operating system.

In this system, the basic unit of a person is no longer "one person," but —

Person + AI Agent + Data + Asset account + Global network

In the past, a person's capability was set by degree, experience, title, resources. In the future, it's set by five things:

Do you use AI deeply
Do you own your own agent workflow
Do you own callable data assets
Can you turn AI into cash flow
Are you plugged into a high-density collaboration network

So the Zeroth World isn't "people who can use AI." Knowing ChatGPT isn't enough. Writing prompts isn't enough. Scrolling AI news every day isn't enough.

The people who can truly enter the Zeroth World are — those who, after being amplified by AI, still have unique value.

AI will wipe out vast amounts of ordinary ability: ordinary writing, ordinary design, ordinary coding, ordinary translation, ordinary consulting, ordinary knowledge-organizing — all quickly commoditized by models.

What will truly be scarce: unique experience, unique judgment, unique taste, unique trust, unique network, unique context. In other words — your Just I Can.

What is it that you have that "only you can"?

04 · Why AI This Time Creates a Real Rupture

Past technological revolutions essentially raised human productivity. The steam engine needed workers, electricity needed factories, cars needed supply chains, the internet needed programmers, operators, salespeople, logistics, content creators. As tech advanced, old jobs vanished but new jobs appeared, and labor was reabsorbed.

But AI's biggest difference is — it doesn't replace one kind of tool; it begins to replace "cognitive labor" itself.

Writing code, drafting plans, making graphics, writing emails, analyzing data, generating contracts, diagnosing problems, doing support, sales, education, research, product prototypes… work that used to take a whole team of white-collar workers can now be done by one person plus a few agents.

So what AI brings isn't a simple efficiency boost — it's a change in the structure of production.

Before: companies hire people, people use software. The future may be: a few people direct agents, and agents do most of the work.

This leads to one result — those at the frontier grow stronger, and those left behind grow more irrelevant. Note: not exploited, but rendered irrelevant. The exploited are at least still in the system; the irrelevant are no longer needed by it.

That is the most terrifying thing about the Zeroth World.

05 · The 12 Filters for the Ten Million

In my view, those who can enter the Zeroth World in the future must meet at least 12 standards. These 12 aren't mysticism or faith-slogans — they are the population filters of the AI era.

Have AI-native cognition. Zeroth-World people don't treat AI as a search engine or a chatbot — they treat it as a cognitive exoskeleton. The ordinary person asks, "Can AI help me write an article?" The Zeroth-World person asks, "Can I design an agent system that produces, sells, learns, and iterates automatically every day?" The former is an AI consumer, the latter an AI producer.
Have your own AI agent. The basic unit of future production isn't the individual, but "person + agent." What matters isn't how advanced the agent is, but whether it can reliably complete real tasks. The Zeroth World doesn't need toys; it needs production systems.
Have your own Just I Can. The stronger AI gets, the more a person needs uniqueness. General ability gets cheaper and cheaper. The most valuable future question isn't "what can you do," but — what do you have that others can't replicate? Without a Just I Can, you get averaged out by AI; with one, you get amplified.
Have personal data assets. In the future it's not whoever uses the model best who wins, but whoever owns high-quality data. Everyone should have their own Memory Bank. Without data, you can only use general AI; with data, you can train your own personal AI.
Have a public digital identity. The Zeroth World doesn't trust empty words. Future credit isn't a résumé — it's Proof of Work. Everyone should have a public homepage recording identity, works, services, cases, contributions. Without a public identity, you basically don't exist in the future network.
Have a sellable product or service. The Zeroth World isn't a study group — it's a production network. Can you create cash flow with AI? It can start small — making short videos for a restaurant, lead-gen for a realtor, auto-support for a small business. The entry isn't "understanding AI," but using AI to complete your first real delivery.
Have an automated workflow. Ordinary people do tasks; Zeroth-World people design systems. The ordinary person says, "I can do marketing"; the Zeroth-World person says, "I have an agent system for auto content generation, customer outreach, sales conversion, payment delivery, and repurchase referral." The gap isn't effort — it's system density.
Have a high-density collaboration network. The Bay Area has 7 million people. The point isn't the geography of the Bay — it's the density. Not everyone has to go to the Bay Area in the future, but everyone has to enter some "non-geographic Bay Area." For Chinese speakers — the Bay Area is the geographic Zeroth World; JIC can be the cognitive Zeroth World for Chinese speakers.
Have continuous-upgrade capability. In the AI era there's no once-and-for-all skill. Today's advanced ability may become ordinary in 90 days. Ship a small work every 7 days; finish a business experiment every 30 days; upgrade your agent system every 90 days; build a new income curve every 365 days.
Have a positive-sum value system. If the Zeroth World is only about making money, it will become a harvesting ground. So there must be one hard rule: you may only make money by helping others level up. Not by harvesting, not by information asymmetry, not by anxiety — but through education, service, connection, automation, and income creation.
Have an on-chain or in-system identity record. The future ten million can't just be members of a WeChat group — they must have verifiable identity. Without an identity system, no management; without a contribution record, no governance; without an asset record, no incentive; without a referral relationship, no growth. The Zeroth World isn't a community — it's a population system.
Have the ability to bring others into the Zeroth World. The highest-level members don't just enter themselves — they bring others in. These people are the true nodes. They can build an entrance in a city, school, industry, or community. These are the truly valuable people.

06 · Ten Million People, Five Layers

Don't think of the ten million as one kind of person. They must be layered.

Layer 01 — AI Awakened · 10,000,000 Aware that AI will change their fate, but not yet acting. The goal isn't to make them pay immediately, but to make them realize — they can't keep sleeping.

Layer 02 — AI Learners · 1,000,000 Starting to learn AI, able to complete real tasks with it. They need 7-day bootcamps, intro courses, agent templates. The goal is to turn them from spectators into learners.

Layer 03 — AI Doers · 100,000 Starting to make works, starting to serve others. This is the crucial cash-flow layer. The goal: build your first money-making agent system within 7 days.

Layer 04 — AI Contributors · 10,000 Not only able to do it themselves, but able to teach others, lead small groups, contribute templates, build tools. The goal: form the ecosystem's backbone.

Layer 05 — AI Nodes · 1,000 Able to build a JIC node in a city, industry, school, or community. These 1,000 are the true organizational core.

Ten million people aren't piled up from content — they grow from nodes.

07 · JIC's Opportunity: Be the Entrance for Chinese Speakers into the Zeroth World

The biggest insight of this era is — the Zeroth World has already formed, but ordinary people have no entrance. Chinese speakers especially have none.

Silicon Valley has the tech entrance; OpenAI and Anthropic have the model entrance; NVIDIA has the compute entrance; VCs have the capital entrance; Stanford and MIT have the academic entrance.

But ordinary Chinese families, founders, small-business owners, students, creators — have no entrance.

So JIC School's positioning can be crystal clear —

JIC School = the bootcamp for Chinese speakers to enter the Zeroth World.

In one line: JIC School helps ordinary people use AI to find their own Just I Can, and build their first money-making agent system within 7 days.

Put more bluntly — it's not about learning AI, but about entering the Zeroth World.

JIC Zero Pass · The Zeroth World Ticket

The product to build right now isn't a grand narrative — it's a ticket. Nine modules: JIC ID, AI ability test, Just I Can positioning, personal Memory Bank, agent workflow templates, the 7-day money challenge, a public works page, your first real delivery, and JIC School entry-level certification.

This isn't selling a course — it's selling a training path into a new world.

08 · The Final Judgment: The Zeroth World Has Already Started Filtering People

The Zeroth World isn't the future. It has already started filtering people.

What it filters out isn't the poor, nor the less-educated. What it filters out is —

those who don't use AI
those unwilling to learn
those with no works
those with no data
those with no agent
those with no uniqueness
those who can't create value
those who only want to spectate, unwilling to act

The cruelest stratification of the future isn't rich versus poor — it's whether you've completed the recombination of "person + agent + data + assets + network."

Whoever completes it enters the Zeroth World. Whoever doesn't gets left behind by an ever-faster world.

So what JIC must do isn't to pitch another concept — it's to give ordinary people a road: to upgrade from AI consumer to Zeroth-World production node.

The ten million of the Zeroth World aren't fans, aren't believers, aren't traffic. They are the first population of a new civilization.

And JIC's mission is to help more ordinary people get this ticket.

WangDou · Founder of JIC

Just I Can