Financial Times 2026-04-23-2
High earners race ahead on AI as workplace divide widens
The FT/Focaldata tracker landed with the expected inequality headline, but the operational finding is buried: corporate training is the single biggest driver of AI adoption, and a single Google session tripled daily usage among UK women over 55. Within lawyers, accountants, and developers, senior and junior adoption rates are nearly identical, which means seniors are directing AI to do what juniors used to do. The career pyramid erosion mechanism is now empirical, not speculative, and every firm that depends on apprenticeship-to-expertise faces a succession crisis that compounds with each training cycle missed.