Is AI failing as an opportunity equalizer?

Not necessarily, but a study raises some important questions

One of the more surprising early findings about AI in the workplace is that its use is not evenly distributed at all. According to a Financial Times poll of 4,000 workers in the United States and the United Kingdom, summarized by Tyler Cowen, AI adoption is heavily skewed toward the best-paid workers: more than 60 percent of top earners report using AI daily, compared with just 16 percent of lower earners. The same reporting also found that the heaviest users are not the youngest workers, but people in their 30s, and that men are using AI at higher rates than women.

That may be only a temporary snapshot. It is entirely possible that AI, because it is so widely accessible, will eventually spread much more evenly across the workforce. But if this pattern persists, it should worry us. A technology often described as democratizing could, in practice, end up reinforcing an older divide: those who know how to use the new tools, and those who do not; those whose jobs are amplified by AI, and those whose jobs are weakened by it; those who gain leverage, and those who quietly lose ground.

From a Catholic -and actually merely human- perspective, that would be a serious problem. A healthy society cannot be indifferent to the emergence of a new class divide built not simply on wealth, but on technological fluency. If AI becomes a force that disproportionately empowers the already educated, already skilled, and already well compensated, then the promise of accessibility will mask a deeper injustice.

The danger is not only that some workers will earn more than others. That has always been true. The danger is that AI may help create a new caste of technological “haves” and “have-nots,” even while presenting itself as universally available.

That is why Catholics should pay attention to this kind of data early. The question is not merely whether AI is efficient. It is whether its benefits are being distributed in a way consistent with human dignity, solidarity, and the common good. If the new tools are mostly strengthening the strong, then society will need more than optimism. It will need formation, access, training, and deliberate efforts to prevent a new inequality from hardening into place. Otherwise, AI may not abolish opportunity, but it may quietly ration it.

And that would be a very modern injustice: a revolution advertised as open to all, but most useful to those already ahead.