Every clean slate comes from some oth­er be­gin­ning’s end.

The old or­der is not com­ing back. The ex­act shape of the new or­der is still con­test­ed, and it may not even be a sin­gle, planned sys­tem.

Sir Vidi­ad­har Sura­jprasad Naipaul’s view, of­fered in his 2001 No­bel Prize lec­ture, is that “The world is al­ways in move­ment. Peo­ple have every­where at some time been dis­pos­sessed.” Dis­pos­ses­sion is not an ex­cep­tion but a con­stant, in­her­ent part of the hu­man con­di­tion. Loss of place is in­evitable.

The pan­dem­ic por­tal re­leased shift­ing pow­er dy­nam­ics, eco­nom­ic ten­sions, a frag­ile in­vestor AI bub­ble around AI ar­chi­tec­tures, and de­bates over glob­al gov­er­nance. Some see it as a “world adrift”. Oth­ers pon­der what to do next since the fu­ture is al­ready here.

US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s strat­e­gy is a can­vas of thun­der­ing, broad, en­er­getic strokes and cal­li­graph­ic black­ened lines that tra­verse, in­ter­sect and dis­rupt the nat­ur­al pati­na and dis­coloura­tion of the post-WWII rules-based in­ter­na­tion­al or­der. It is a bold field, filled with float­ing, vi­brant, and at times faint wash-like patch­es of new ideas.

This play­book is dri­ven by cre­ative de­struc­tion, which gives added mo­men­tum to forces that have been stir­ring for some time. The ends of these be­gin­nings are erod­ing in­er­tia and stul­ti­fi­ca­tion while al­so fos­ter­ing nos­tal­gia.

Present shifts are so deep and sweep­ing that one glob­al be­he­moth is now op­er­at­ing with a “hy­brid work­force” that in­cludes rough­ly 25,000 AI agents work­ing along­side ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40,000 hu­man em­ploy­ees. These AI Agents are au­tonomous sys­tems that plan tasks, man­age work­flows, and ex­e­cute work such as da­ta analy­sis, re­search, and slide draft­ing. These agents have al­ready gen­er­at­ed 2.5 mil­lion charts over six months and saved 1.5 mil­lion hours on search and syn­the­sis tasks, al­low­ing hu­man work­ers to fo­cus on high­er-val­ue, client-fac­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.

The firm has ac­tive­ly en­gaged in work­force re­design. Non-client-fac­ing roles have de­creased by about 25 per cent while over­all out­put has in­creased, as part of a “25-squared” mod­el that in­creas­es client-fac­ing roles while re­duc­ing back-of­fice roles. The ob­jec­tive is to have every hu­man em­ploy­ee work­ing along­side at least one AI agent. 

The com­pa­ny is rapid­ly re­mak­ing it­self around ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence. The rapid agent roll­out re­flects a broad­er in­dus­try trend of em­bed­ding gen­er­a­tive AI across sev­er­al facets of dai­ly work. The firm is al­so mov­ing away from its tra­di­tion­al ad­vi­so­ry work and clas­sic fee-for-ser­vice ap­proach. In­stead, the com­pa­ny is mov­ing to­ward a mod­el in which it works with clients to iden­ti­fy joint busi­ness cas­es and then helps them un­der­write the out­comes of those cas­es.

Ac­cord­ing to the Crunch­base Tech Lay­offs Track­er, US-based tech com­pa­nies cut around 127,000 jobs in 2025 alone. How­ev­er, not all roles are be­ing cut equal­ly, and the skills that re­main in de­mand are chang­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly. AI is re­shap­ing job de­scrip­tions. Tools that au­to­mate parts of soft­ware de­vel­op­ment, da­ta analy­sis, con­tent gen­er­a­tion, or in­fra­struc­ture man­age­ment mean that some tasks with­in jobs are chang­ing rapid­ly, even if those jobs don’t van­ish en­tire­ly.

What is emerg­ing is a cat­a­logue of skills em­ploy­ers are pri­ori­tis­ing.  These new be­gin­nings are a chal­lenge to in­sti­tu­tions in ru­ins. In­sti­tu­tions with char­ters that are un­re­spon­sive. In­sti­tu­tions that are im­pas­sive to the changes creep­ing around their colon­nades for decades and in­to their foun­da­tions.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has brought the en­tire world to a Naipau­lian “Bend in the Riv­er”, forc­ing the world to ad­dress the prob­lems of dis­place­ment, dis­pos­ses­sion, in­ter­gen­er­a­tional im­mo­bil­i­ty and in­her­it­ed in­equal­i­ty frontal­ly.

Naipaul’s post-colo­nial re­pos­ses­sion and re­vi­sion of Joseph Con­rad’s “Heart of Dark­ness” is a re­minder that there will al­ways come a time when the cen­tre can­not hold, and where things con­tin­ue to fall apart. Decades af­ter Joseph Con­rad con­front­ed the de­ceits of the colo­nial mis­sion and the pal­tri­ness of civil­i­sa­tion in the face of an over­whelm­ing wilder­ness and hu­man suf­fer­ing, Naipaul stages a mod­ernist epic, us­ing Africa as a sym­bol­ic waste­land for the col­lapse of a uni­ver­sal Eu­ro­pean Or­der.

In Naipaul’s “A Bend in the Riv­er”, the pro­tag­o­nist leaves the East African coast for an in­land town at a riv­er’s bend seek­ing a new life, on­ly to be­come a de­tached ob­serv­er of post-colo­nial African po­lit­i­cal tur­moil and so­cial de­cay, ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dis­place­ment and strug­gling with iden­ti­ty as he nav­i­gates chang­ing for­tunes and be­tray­als. His ap­praisal was that the old po­lit­i­cal sys­tem was com­ing to an end, and what would re­place it wouldn’t be pleas­ant.

While Con­rad’s “Heart of Dark­ness” un­masked the colo­nial project, “A Bend in the Riv­er” lays bare its con­se­quences, in­clud­ing cor­rupt lead­ers, dis­il­lu­sion­ment, per­sis­tent pover­ty, failed in­fra­struc­ture, deep-seat­ed cul­tur­al and po­lit­i­cal wounds, and frag­ment­ed iden­ti­ties shaped by the colours of shad­ows that make it pos­si­ble for all of the ar­rivals to make in­vis­i­ble the bru­tal­i­ty of their ar­rival. How can we align the fu­ture of work in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean with a world that is al­ways in move­ment?

Dr Fazal Ali com­plet­ed his Mas­ter’s in Phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. He was a Com­mon­wealth Schol­ar who at­tend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge, Hugh­es Hall, provost of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the act­ing pres­i­dent, and chair­man of the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. He is present­ly a con­sul­tant with the IDB. He can be reached at faza­lal­itsc@gmail.com