The Great AI Jobs Separation is here

The winners won’t be the companies with the biggest models, but those whose people turn AI into a force multiplier.

Author

Malcolm Frank, CEO
November 10, 2025

The Great AI Jobs Separation is here

For years, many of us have warned of a great wave of AI about to crash over every white-collar job. It felt a bit like the weatherman forever predicting the hundred-year storm that never came. Well, the sky has finally darkened. The storm has made landfall, and with it comes a new divide: the Great AI Jobs Separation.

Job cuts in the US in October reached a 22-year high, driven not by an economic downturn but by deep structural shifts in how companies operate. Companies aren’t just adopting AI; they’re rebuilding around it.

And this is creating a separation in the workforce. On one side stand the “AI power users,” employees who leverage AI models and agents the way early traders treated spreadsheets: as unfair advantages. They write, code, and analyze faster, and their performance reviews gleam.  On the other side are workers and roles that haven’t made the leap. They’re being quietly automated away or reorganized out. 

For executives, the mandate is simple: make AI fluency the new default. Audit operations for “automation gravity” (e.g., the jobs and processes sliding toward machines) and retrain before replacement becomes policy.  Build AI into performance reviews: reward curiosity, measure amplification, promote the people who multiply themselves with it.

For individuals, the message is just as stark: learn to work with AI, or risk being overtaken by it. The winners won’t be the companies with the biggest models, but those whose people turn AI into a force multiplier. The separation isn’t coming: it’s already here.

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