AI: The Great Equaliser or the Next Gatekeeper?

I believe AI has the potential to be the great equaliser a force powerful enough to replace the current mediocrity with true meritocracy.

For centuries, opportunity has been shaped not by talent or vision, but by birthright, wealth, and access to elite networks. The rules were written to keep power concentrated in the hands of the few. But AI is shifting that balance.

A teenager in Nairobi with an internet connection can now design, code, and launch with the same force as a Stanford graduate backed by Sand Hill Road. A farmer’s daughter in rural Iowa can build a global brand from her kitchen table using the same design, research, and storytelling tools as a luxury conglomerate. AI doesn’t ask about your surname, your bank balance, or which old-boys’ club you belong to. It works with what you bring: your ideas, your vision, your persistence.

That’s what meritocracy should look like. The best ideas rise because they are better  not because they are better funded.

But let’s not be naïve. AI is not automatically liberating. If it is monopolised by tech giants, locked behind subscriptions, or built on biased datasets, it risks reinforcing the very hierarchies it could dismantle. In the wrong hands, AI could automate mediocrity at scale or tighten the gatekeeping of knowledge and opportunity.

The equaliser only emerges if access remains open, if transparency is demanded, and if those of us who use it are brave enough to move past templates and mediocrity. AI can democratise creativity and commerce, but only if we insist it serves the many, not the few.

And perhaps that’s the real opportunity. If the current state of humanity  with its noise, greed, and patriarchal systems, fades into the background, that is not a loss but a filter. AI has the capacity to surface the people who carry vision, compassion, and regenerative thinking, and to give them the tools and platforms to lead.

The choice is ours. AI will shape our future but whether it builds a new meritocracy or cements the old mediocracies depends on us.