Beyond DEI: Why AI's Identity-Blind Revolution Makes Us All Equal(ly) Replaceable

For better or worse, the coming "Identity Collapse" will change everything

We need to talk about AI and what it will mean for all of us in the very near future.

Thanks to Amanda Claypool and others with prescience, I’ve become obsessed with this topic. Because it’s increasingly clear that we're currently living in the most transformational time in human history — a period that will make the Industrial Revolution look like the leap from VHS to DVD. And that’s not hyperbole.

The speed of the coming transformation will be unprecedented.

The Industrial Revolution took nearly a century to fully reshape society, but the entire planet will experience radical and sweeping change in the next 18-24 months. No, that’s not a typo. Our lives — not the lives of our grandkids — might be upended before the next installment of the Marvel franchise is released.

These changes are also unfolding more rapidly than 95% of humans realize, and I believe it’s one of the primary reasons the job market has stalled and left many job seekers dazed and confused. Many assume the current downturn is merely cyclical and that things will return to "normal" at some point.

They won’t. The world as we know it is ending. Full stop.

What we're experiencing isn't a temporary blip or a recession. Employers are betting on AI and factoring in the productivity boosts and cost savings of replacing human workers with AI. It’s the beginning of a fundamental restructuring of society on par with the shift from agricultural to industrial economies. Except this time, the timeline is compressed from centuries to years.

By 2030 (notice how that date keeps coming up?), nearly all projections point to AI displacing 92 million roles at companies. And it won’t stop there; that’s just the beginning of the technological tsunami speeding toward us.

Those who are paying close attention worry that LLMs that are smarter than we are and robots that are stronger and more durable than we are will make our contributions less valuable. It’s a valid concern, but our fears don’t matter. The AI revolution doesn’t care if we’re emotionally prepared for what’s coming.

Now that I’ve unsettled you, let’s talk about how we navigate our path forward. Because as disturbing as the AI revolution is, I think it could also present an incredible opportunity — if we’re grounded, prepared, and we work together without fear.

I happen to be a HUGE fan of sci fi, and the common denominator I’ve observed in nearly all futuristic stories is that people in them rely on computers to do almost everything — navigate a starship, perform surgery, repair other machines, etc. Granted, it seems cool in a film…yet it feels terrifying in our current landscape, doesn’t it? The gap between “edgy fictional future” and “Jesus, this is actually happening!” is a gaping chasm.

When I reflect on my favorite sci fi books and films, I can’t help but notice that the future depicted looks a lot like what’s coming for us soon.

In Alien, did anyone on the Nostromo own a home? Did Luke Skywalker go to college and patiently feed his 401(K)? Were there “neighborhoods” in Blade Runner? It’s a completely different kind of living in this future reality. It's not just about flying cars and robot butlers; it’s about a fundamental restructuring of the way humans live and find meaning in their lives.

Here’s my point: We all know that at some point humanity will enter a "space age" with faster-than-light travel, teleportation, off-planet colonies, and all the other bells and whistles. Undeniably, these advancements will be largely enabled by AI.

But how do we get to that place from where we are now?

That’s the part they always skip over in utopian science fiction — the messy transitional period. The economic collapse, mass unemployment, social dislocation and unrest that inevitably precedes the sleek and shiny, streamlined future. Those stories begin after humanity somehow muddled through an extremely chaotic and disruptive period. But they never quite explain how we managed that trick. (I think First Contact is probably the only film that comes closest to documenting this transitional period when the historic warp drive flight leads to humanity’s first encounter with alien life).

This is the transitional period I believe we find ourselves in now. The beginning of massive uncertainty and disruption as we prepare to enter the “space age” and a bold new future, or whatever we want to call this next phase of human civilization — the AI Age, the Post-Work Era, the “Dear God, Everything We Thought Defined Us Is Thrown Out the Window” epoch.

How will humanity fare during this period? That’s the trillion-dollar question. And that’s what I'm focused on now.

The reality is that a lot fewer of us will be needed in an AI-dominated world. Just look at the data. McKinsey researchers now project that 60-70% of worker activities could be automated, up from their previous estimate of 50%. Goldman Sachs sees a “significant disruption” in the labor market on the horizon that could affect 300 million jobs in the U.S. and Europe. The World Economic Forum estimates 85 million jobs gone by 2025, with 97 million new roles created — but those new roles require skills that most displaced workers don’t have.

That means many of us will soon find ourselves working less and with a lot more “free” time. Very likely, this also means we will involuntarily lower our standard of living and learn to live with less (the World Economic Forum’s slogan “You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy” begins to make more sense now, doesn't it? I suspect they’ve known for a long time that we would reach a technological watershed circa 2030).

For many, there will likely be “identity collapse” — a term we should expect to hear more in the coming years — especially recent college graduates whose meaning and purpose are defined by careers that will soon be obsolete. Imagine spending four years and six figures preparing for entry level jobs that AI can do better, faster, and cheaper by the time you graduate. (Frankly, I think anyone who sends their kid to an expensive college this Fall is literally flushing money down the toilet, unless it’s in a field that requires human creativity, critical thinking, and non-routine manual skills).

On the upside, an “identity collapse” could also be a great equalizer. Hear me out.

If everyone’s professional identity is thrown into chaos at once, we’ll all be forced to reckon with fundamental questions: What makes us valuable beyond our economic output? What does it mean to be human when machines can do most of what we’ve traditionally defined as “work”?

Whenever systems are disrupted, there’s opportunity for reset. And here’s the wild truth nobody's talking about: AI might accomplish what a decade of DEI initiatives couldn’t. The AI tsunami could wash away many of the barriers that have arguably kept certain groups at the margins.

Credential-worship has created an entire class system based on whether someone managed to get a fancy degree before they were old enough to legally drink. AI could obliterate this hierarchy by enabling anyone with actual skills to demonstrate their abilities, regardless of where (or if) they went to school. Similarly, AI could neutralize human biases that can poison hiring and advancement.

How many careers have stalled because a candidate lacked the right connections? AI could significantly reduce this advantage by creating pathways to opportunity that don’t depend on who you know or where you went to school. Merit demonstrated through work samples and AI-enabled assessments diminishes the importance of having an “in” and creates a more level playing field for everyone.

Perhaps most revolutionary is AI's potential to democratize access to productivity tools and reduce the advantage of social capital. The playing field gets a lot more level when everyone has ChatGPT or the same AI assistant. The small business owner in rural America suddenly has the same caliber of marketing, legal, and administrative support as the Manhattan executive.

But AI could also worsen inequality.

The International Monetary Fund highlights the possibility of “polarization within income brackets, with workers who can harness AI seeing an increase in their productivity and wages—and those who cannot falling behind.” This could widen the gap between elite professionals and everyone else, inviting claims from DEI advocates that educated, straight White guys are more likely to enjoy the “privilege” of “leveraging” AI to their advantage and reinforcing concerns of systemic bias.

Except the data doesn’t support this.

A recent Goldman Sachs analysis found that in the U.S., 46% of office and administrative support jobs could be automated, followed by 44% for legal work and 37% for architecture and engineering.

On the flip side, installation, maintenance, and repair work will be the second least affected industry with only 4% of work potentially impacted, and construction and extraction ranking third from the bottom with 6%.

Let that sink in.

The jobs most vulnerable to AI displacement aren’t blue-collar; they’re white-collar, knowledge-economy jobs — the jobs that college-educated professionals have been training for. Lawyers. Accountants. Managers. Analysts. Journalists. Designers. Programmers. People from middle and upper middle class families who went to elite schools and jumped through all the right hoops.

How viable will any DEI model be when the great majority of jobs lost will be among “privileged” white collar workers?

As Goldman Sachs’ data confirms, there’s every reason to believe that manual trade skills — not mind-based skills — will be in greatest demand in the near future. Plumbers, electricians, HVAC specialists, and construction workers — these jobs require complex physical manipulation in unpredictable environments, and they’re precisely the kind of work that AI and robots struggle with. And the last time I checked, people of color aren’t severely underrepresented in those fields.

When the straight, White male CEO still has a job, but 50% of the workforce across ALL demographic categories gets pink slips, the real dividing line won’t be identity; it will be who owns the means of production in an AI economy — and the MAGA-loving guy behind the counter at Enterprise Rent-A-Car isn’t part of the means-of-production-owning class.

The “winners” will be the few educated professionals who are lucky and savvy enough to harness AI early on, and enterprising working class people who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty. While the former will likely be disproportionately White, the latter will likely be more weighted towards non-White workers.

Bottom line: There’s a LOT to digest about what’s coming and how it will impact all of us, and I don’t think governments or business leaders are preparing us for our future. The vast majority will be caught off guard. So it’s up to us to prepare ourselves and each other.

I've decided to spend a lot more time writing about this, particularly as it impacts our work at FAIR. As we navigate this transformational period we need to ensure that technological advancements complement rather than replace human creativity and contribution, and that the massive socio-economic transition during this period creates a pathway for bridge building. This transition won’t be smooth or equitable without intentional intervention.

The coming challenges will force us to confront our shared humanity outside of our economic roles. Because AI doesn't care if we're Black, white, male, female, gay, straight, cis, or trans. When it efficiently does the job better than ALL humans, those identity categories lose their socio-economic significance.

We’ll be forced to build a society based on something other than productive capacity. We'll have to find worth in our humanity, not our utility. And isn’t that what we've been arguing for all along? That people have inherent value beyond their demographic identity or economic output?

Yes, there will be much fear and uncertainty. Massive disruption. Resistance. Denial. Protests. Maybe worse things we can’t even contemplate.

But this could also be a unifying moment.

The AI revolution is here, whether we like it or not. As humans, we must all face what’s coming TOGETHER — not as competing identity groups fighting for scraps in a shrinking job market, but as a species confronting an existential shift in what it means to be human. Our shared vulnerability might gift us with our greatest opportunity for unity. When machines don’t discriminate in who they replace, we might finally see each other clearly.

That’s a future worth building toward, and I believe organizations like FAIR can play a key role in helping us create it.

The next few years might be crazy and scary, but they could also be unbelievably exciting. We are living in epic times, and I’m honored to be here at this moment.

I hope you are, too.