The Great AI Divergence Is Here. Most Businesses Aren't Ready

A new White House report warns that AI could trigger economic shifts as profound as the Industrial Revolution. The divide between winners and losers is already forming.The Council of Economic Advisers just released a 27-page analysis titled "Artificial Intelligence and the Great Divergence," drawing a stark parallel between today's AI race and the 19th-century transformation in which industrializing nations accelerated their growth relative to the rest of the world. 

Meanwhile at The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva described AI as "a tsunami hitting the labor market," and Amazon is reportedly preparing to cut up to 30,000 corporate positions, potentially the largest layoff in company history.

To understand what these developments mean for businesses and workers, I spoke with SmarterX and Marketing AI Institute founder and CEO Paul Roetzer on Episode 193 of The Artificial Intelligence Show.

A "Professionally Done" Warning from the White House

Though the Council of Economic Advisers is within the Office of the President, this report is remarkably apolitical, Roetzer says. It seems to reflect the Council’s intended role to provide objective economic analysis. 

"Regardless of political affiliation, this is an exceptionally well-written document," he says. "It's very well researched. It's nuanced. It doesn't take a really strong stance one way or the other. It largely lacks any political propaganda, which was refreshing, honestly."

The report's central thesis: Nations and firms leading in AI infrastructure and adoption are poised to accelerate growth at rates significantly higher than the rest of the world. The administration is positioning AI as a matter of economic survival, laying groundwork for American dominance through accelerated innovation, infrastructure development, and deregulation.

But the report acknowledges a critical limitation: We're still in the early stages of understanding AI's true economic impact. The effects won't necessarily show up in GDP or employment data immediately.

"The general output is that we anticipate significant disruption, most likely," says Roetzer. "But we have to look at early indicators because we don't necessarily see it in GDP yet, and we don't necessarily hear it directly tied to job loss. But that doesn't mean it's not there, and it's not simmering."

While the White House report focuses on opportunity, other voices in Davos struck a more alarming tone. IMF research suggests AI will affect 60% of jobs in advanced economies and 40% globally, with entry-level and middle-class roles facing the highest risk of elimination.

Georgieva of IMF specifically warned that the middle class is the group most likely to be affected. For many workers, AI won't enhance their jobs; it will threaten them.

Amazon Layoffs

At Amazon, the company is reportedly preparing to cut approximately 14,000 corporate positions next week as part of a broader plan to eliminate 30,000 white-collar roles across multiple units, including AWS and Prime Video. If completed, it would be the largest layoff in Amazon's three-decade history.

CEO Andy Jassy has offered shifting explanations. During cuts in October 2025, he cited productivity gains from generative AI. On a third-quarter earnings call, he attributed the reductions to "culture and bureaucracy." But Roetzer points to a Jassy memo that tells a different story.

"Regardless of what Amazon PR messaging is," says Roetzer, "I'm just going to take you back to June 2025 and a memo that Andy Jassy wrote. This is his own words, and then you can draw your own conclusions.”

Jassy wrote: "In the next few years, we expect that generative AI and AI agents will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company."

Roetzer has seen this pattern repeatedly in private conversations with executives.

"Leaders don't want to say publicly what they're all thinking and saying privately," he says. "The reality is AI is the primary driver of leaner organizations. They know they need fewer people across the organization. They just can't admit that."

The Great Divergence Inside Companies

The White House report frames the "great divergence" as an international phenomenon, with AI-forward nations pulling ahead of the rest. But Roetzer sees the same dynamic playing out at the company level, and the individual level, too.

"There is this great divergence occurring where some businesses are racing forward and figuring this stuff out, and others are just sitting at the starting line," he says.

He breaks down organizational AI adoption into three stages: understanding (what AI is, what it's capable of, how it applies), piloting (constantly testing and finding personalized use cases), and scaling (consistently infusing AI across every aspect of the organization).

The problem is most companies think they've "adopted" AI because they've distributed ChatGPT or Copilot licenses. But licenses don't equal transformation.

"This is the problem you see over and over again: You go into a company, they say, 'Yes, we have ChatGPT licenses for everybody, or Copilot or Gemini or whatever it is,'" says Roetzer. "It's like, OK, great. Are they using it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Weekly active usage is really strong. Forty percent of people used it this week. 

“‘OK, how many times did they use it this week? Well, the average user is three. OK. What did they do with it? Did they ask it a question or did they go build a custom GPT that saved them 10 hours last week?"

Until companies drill down past surface-level metrics, they won't realize how little value their employees are actually extracting from these tools.

A Widening Gap

New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose recently captured the cultural dimension of this divergence. He noted that while early adopters in San Francisco are "putting multi-agent Claude swarms in charge of their lives," workers elsewhere are still trying to get approval to use Copilot in Teams.

"There seems to be a cultural takeoff happening in addition to the technical one that is not ideal," Roose wrote.

Roetzer sees this gap widening rapidly. In his private conversations with executives, Roetzer has found a troubling pattern: Leaders believe AI will displace workers, but they have no concrete plan for what comes next.

"They all want to believe that more jobs are going to be created, that there will be places for these people to go," he says. "And so do the AI labs. Yet if you point blank ask the leaders of the labs or the CEOs of these companies, 'OK, what are those jobs?’

In the next 12 to 24 months, let's say you have to lay off 10-20% of your workforce. Where are you putting them? What are the new jobs?' Crickets."

The historical argument that technological disruption always creates more jobs than it destroys might hold true over five to 10 years. But Roetzer isn't convinced it applies to the next two years.

"Nobody knows what the near-term answer to this is," he says. "They all just blind-faith believe that over five to 10 years it'll figure itself out. And I don't disagree with that. I do think there's a reasonable possibility this works out great in the next decade.

I do not think that is what happens over the next two years."

Why This Matters: An Uncomfortable Reality

The convergence of these signals—a White House warning about economic divergence, IMF forecasts of labor market disruption, and the largest layoff in Amazon's history—points to a big shift that's already underway.

For business leaders, the message is clear: Giving your team AI licenses isn't the same as AI transformation. Real adoption requires moving employees from basic usage (asking simple questions) to intermediate (complex problem-solving, custom workflows) to advanced (reimagining entire business processes and innovating).

For workers, the stakes are equally high. AI literacy isn't just a "nice to have" anymore, it's becoming essential for employment.