Written by: Robert Brennan Hart
MY 18-YEAR OLD SON ASKED ME a question over espresso that I couldn’t answer with any honesty: “If AI is going to change everything about work, what’s the point of any of this?” He gestured vaguely at his laptop, at the university applications scattered across the table, at the entire apparatus of credential-gathering that we’ve told him matters.
I’ve been building companies for twenty or so years. I’ve watched the dot-com crash, the 2008 financial crisis, the pandemic’s economic ruptures, and now this; the arrival of systems that can perform cognitive work at near-zero marginal cost. Each disruption felt like revelation at the time, but this one operates at a different frequency. This one asks fundamental questions about the relationship between work, value, and survival itself.
But here’s what I couldn’t articulate to him in that moment, what crystallizes slowly: the transformation we’re witnessing doesn’t make digital access less critical. It makes exclusion existential.
WE ARE WATCHING the compression of entire categories of predictable work. Not just manufacturing jobs automated decades ago, but cognitive work, creative work, analytical work; the very categories we told young people represented safety in the knowledge economy.
The machine learning systems don’t just perform tasks; they learn the patterns that define whole occupations. Legal research. Financial analysis. Customer service. Content creation. Code writing. Medical diagnosis. Each breakthrough represents thousands of hours of human labour compressed into microseconds of computational execution.
This isn’t dystopian speculation. It’s quarterly earnings calls. Companies proudly announcing headcount reductions while increasing output. Job postings requiring AI proficiency for positions that didn’t exist three years ago. Entry-level roles disappearing because the “learning curve” work now happens in training data rather than junior positions.
The future my son faces isn’t the one we prepared him for. The ladder we told him to climb, school to university to stable employment, is dissolving wire to wire. And before we dismiss this as generational anxiety that every cohort experiences, we must reckon with what makes this different: the speed of change has outpaced our institutions’ ability to adapt. In a world where traditional employment becomes precarious or obsolete, digital access doesn’t become less important. It becomes the difference between participation and disappearance.
CONSIDER WHAT ECONOMIC participation looks like in an AI-transformed economy:
Continuous learning becomes mandatory, not optional. The half-life of skills collapses from decades to years, perhaps months. Those who cannot constantly upskill, reskill, and adapt face accelerating obsolescence. But learning requires access; to platforms, to resources, to communities of practice, to the tools themselves.
Entrepreneurship and value creation shift from exception to expectation. When traditional jobs vanish, people must create their own opportunities – selling services, building businesses, participating in platform economies. Every one of these activities requires reliable digital infrastructure.
Portfolio careers replace single-employer stability. Workers piece together income from multiple sources – contract work, gig platforms, digital services, remote opportunities. Managing this complexity demands always-on connectivity and multiple devices.
Geographic mobility becomes a virtual necessity. The jobs that remain concentrate in specific locations, but remote work offers potential escape valves. Except remote work requires not just connectivity but bandwidth, stability, and appropriate hardware.
Now overlay this transformed economic landscape with our current reality: the woman at the Vancouver Public Library, clutching her folder of documents, waiting for her forty-five-minute window at a shared terminal. How does she continuously upskill when she has forty-five minutes before automatic logout? How does she build a portfolio career when she can’t reliably access the platforms that distribute work? How does she compete for remote opportunities when she lacks the infrastructure that makes them possible?
THIS IS WHERE the violence of our current approach reveals itself: we are automating opportunity while treating access as individual responsibility.
AI systems train on vast datasets, improving through exposure to millions of examples. Those with access can experiment, learn, iterate. They can use AI tools to amplify their capabilities, to automate their own routine work, to scale their value creation. Digital access becomes a force multiplier; those who have it can leverage AI to compete far above their weight class.
Meanwhile, those without access can’t even observe what’s happening. They can’t experiment with the tools reshaping their industries. They can’t learn the new literacies that determine employability. They can’t access the platforms where opportunities now exist. They can’t even see clearly what’s being automated away until it’s too late to adapt.
The gap doesn’t stay static, it compounds. Every day without access represents falling further behind an accelerating curve. And unlike previous technological transitions that played out over decades, this one operates in years, perhaps months. The window for adaptation narrows while the infrastructure gap persists.
We’ve created a perfect mechanism for converting temporary disadvantage into permanent exclusion. Those already marginalized by cost-shifting – the single parent working multiple jobs, the senior on fixed income, the newcomer navigating settlement – now face not just service barriers but survival barriers.
THE ABSURDITY INTENSIFIES: we have the tools to address this. Canadians discard one million tonnes of electronics annually, much of it functional. Previous-generation laptops entirely capable of running modern productivity software, of accessing learning platforms, of participating in digital economies. Devices that could enable someone to learn AI tools, to access remote work, to build alternative income streams. But we treat these devices as waste rather than infrastructure. We design for obsolescence rather than durability. We optimize for consumption rather than access.
Meanwhile, the AI systems themselves become more accessible; many tools are free or low-cost, democratized compared to previous technological waves. The barrier isn’t the AI. It’s the infrastructure required to access it.
Think about this: we’ve built systems of artificial intelligence that can tutor students, draft documents, analyze data, generate code, create content – all available to anyone with a device and connectivity. The technology has democratized. But access to that democratized technology remains profoundly unequal.
MY SON’S QUESTION persists precisely because I don’t have an answer about what specific skills or credentials will matter. I don’t know which industries survive, which roles persist, which pathways lead somewhere sustainable. The velocity of change exceeds our predictive capacity.
But I know with certainty what matters foundationally: the infrastructure to participate in whatever emerges. When work becomes continuous adaptation, reliable access becomes existential. When value creation requires constant learning, connectivity becomes survival. When opportunities distribute through digital platforms, devices become the difference between participating and vanishing.
We can’t predict the future of work. But we can ensure people have the tools to navigate whatever arrives. We can treat digital access as the infrastructure it has become – foundational, essential, universal.
This isn’t charity. It’s not even primarily about equity, though equity matters. It’s about basic functionality in a transformed economy. It’s about ensuring that when the floor collapses beneath traditional employment, people have the tools to build alternative paths.
IN MY PREVIOUS article , I wrote about terminal velocity – the infrastructure we refuse to name. That refusal becomes catastrophic when the ground itself is shifting. We’re not just cost-shifting anymore. We’re risk-shifting. We’re pushing the burden of economic transformation onto individuals, then denying them the infrastructure to adapt. We’re automating opportunity while treating access as luxury. We’re building a future that requires universal digital participation while maintaining that such participation remains individual responsibility.
The path forward requires naming this honestly: in an AI-transformed economy, digital exclusion doesn’t just mean service barriers or opportunity gaps. It means economic obsolescence. It means being systematically unable to participate in whatever replaces traditional employment.
My son deserves an honest answer. So do the millions navigating an economy being reshaped in real-time. The answer starts with infrastructure; the foundation that makes adaptation possible when everything else is uncertain.