Operation HOPE CEO issues a warning on AI: 'If you don't bring people with you, they'll fight you, or worse'

CONVERGE LIVE - Singapore, March 12-13 2025 - Request invitation

John Hope Bryant, CEO of Operation HOPE, warned on Wednesday that the risk of jobs being eliminated by artificial intelligence will disproportionately impact those "at the bottom of the pyramid."

He urged governments to invest more resources into upskilling the working and middle classes, as well as younger generations, on the technology, which in the long run could help boost productivity and economies globally, he said.

"We are not spending nearly enough time focusing on the bottom of the pyramid," Bryant told CNBC's Julia Boorstin at CONVERGE LIVE in Singapore on Wednesday. "Convenience store [jobs are] gone, grocery store jobs are gone ... This is not the future. This is right now."

"So if you have a high school education and limited relationship capital, and you don't have a government and a private sector that's prioritizing [upskilling it's people on AI] ... in five years between 2025 to 2030, the world's going to pass you by," Bryant said.

The advancement and proliferation of AI will create massive waves of change, said Bryant, who's also the founder of Operation HOPE, a financial literacy and economic empowerment nonprofit.

"What people don't realize is that literally everything we see is going to be touched by artificial intelligence. It's a complete do-over of society," he said. "It's like the horse and buggy of 1850 in America ... when the automobile was introduced ... within 10 years, the horse was made irrelevant."

The United States economy, specifically, is facing big problems as the country's national debt currently stands at more than $36.2 trillion.

"So you can say, well, in order to solve this deficit, we gotta cut, cut, cut. But you can't cut