AI disruption is already here: Here’s how Kansas City workers navigate reality redefined by tech

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He said employers should also adapt, including by training their employees on new skills.

Construction continues on Meta’s $1 billion data center complex in northern Kansas City, with additional buildings under development after the first phase became operational in August 2025; photo by Thomas White, The Beacon

Opportunity in AI transformation

McQueen and others say that alongside the change AI brings is opportunity. McQueen points to the Full Employment Council, which recently completed a staffing search for a Northland data center.

“They are offering jobs to like 75 to 100 people,” said McQueen. “Those jobs are paying like $23 an hour, so they’re not cheap jobs.”

Data centers are springing up all over the country to house the hardware needed to power and process the large data sets needed for generative AI. Despite environmental concerns, companies have invested $40 billion in the U.S. on new data center construction between June 2024 and June 2025, according to Reuters.

Mychal Shaw, founder of Uwazi.ai, a Kansas City-based startup that looks to use AI to promote civic engagement, said that there will be short-term challenges as AI implementation scales up, but that those challenges will ultimately be worth it.

“I think we are in the Industrial Revolution phase,” Shaw said. “AI is going to be the biggest disrupter in a positive way.”

Shaw said that the change AI represents is bigger than the implementation of the internet, email and smartphones combined. He said AI has grown exponentially and will continue to as AI large language models can be used to produce even more specifically targeted large language models.

That big of a change is naturally scary, Shaw said, but AI can be used to upskill yourself. He said he taught himself to code during the pandemic but has used AI tools to advance his skills and to help build his startup.

“The fun thing about AI is the opportunity to advance your mindset, your skill set, those things, those (tools) will all be available to you,” Shaw said. “They’re a lot more accessible now than they were even just five years ago. I say that particularly to minority communities who historically have not had that available. AI is a tool that allows you to catch up.”

Bassett said that AI can also level the playing field between larger and smaller companies.

“AI acts as the great equalizer,” Bassett said. “It allows a five-person team in Manhattan, Kansas, to compete with a 500-person team in Manhattan, New York.”

Mark Esposito, professor of economics and strategy at both Hult International Business School and Harvard University, told the Kansas economic conference that over the next 50 years the economy will see a shift in value from labor production to learning systems like AI.

“The future economy will be built on algorithms, not assembly lines,” Esposito said. “AI as a new factor of production is really the new horizon of competitiveness.”

How to adapt as a worker

For Kansas City workers currently in jobs that are exposed to AI automation, Escalera said to focus on increasing skills in aspects of your job that can’t be automated. That could eventually mean a pivot in job titles like moving from a customer service representative to a customer experience specialist who strategizes how to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Bassett and Shaw said white-collar workers may have no choice but to adopt the use of AI.

“I think it takes a conscious investment, especially in the white-collar space, to educate yourself on utilizing AI properly, because it can actually maximize your productivity,” Shaw said. “That makes you, in a way, unfireable.”

Bassett says that AI can’t replace strategy, vision, taste, relationship building or emotional intelligence — among many other innately human qualities — and that honing those skills will give you a leg up. He advocates for adopting AI use over time, familiarizing yourself with models incrementally, to rid yourself of repetitive “busy work.”

“Become a director, not a doer,” Bassett said. “If your day is all task work, you’re just doing AI’s job of tomorrow. In a couple of years AI is going to be doing 99% of that to-do list and doing it better than you.”

McQueen said that no matter your field you must continue to grow and hone your skills to remain competitive. If you work in a field that uses AI — the Full Employment Council also connects people to jobs that are largely unaffected by AI, like the trades — you’ll need to adapt or risk being left behind.

“AI means a market adjustment in terms of your skills and the job that you perform,” McQueen said. “You’ve got to plan for the market to adjust. It’s not going to be the same.”