Labor pains and AI gains not the only option

"You AI guys are traitors to the codebase — you've already killed frontend, now you're coming for backend …" That remark captures the growing unease among knowledge workers in a hyper-competitive work environment.

The GitHub project "colleague skill" has recently gone viral in China. Users can feed a colleague's chat logs, documents and work patterns into an AI agent that replicates the person's professional skills — triggering intense fears of job replacement among workers.

Similar projects — such as "ex skill", which attempts to recreate former romantic partners, and "Zhang Xuefeng skill", named after the late education influencer who died suddenly in March at age 41 — have amplified the buzz.