AI threat: Millions face career uncertainty after 30-year professional journey ends

(SeaPRwire) –   My career came to a close on November 7, 2023. It wasn’t a dramatic termination or a contentious departure, but the result of a corporate acquisition that eliminated my position. After nearly thirty years in the field, including nine as an executive at a biotech firm, I was left with nothing.

It was more than a job I lost. I lost the foundational structure upon which I had constructed my professional identity. I convinced myself it was a temporary setback. I was mistaken.

The ensuing experience is what I now term “professional identity purgatory”—a seemingly indefinite state of limbo devoid of title, structure, or clear path forward. It is the undefined space separating your former professional self from the person you may yet become.

In Catholic teaching, purgatory is an intermediate state—neither heaven nor hell, but a phase of cleansing before reaching a better place. I return to this metaphor because “professional identity purgatory” is not failure; it is a transition without a defined endpoint. It is the bewildering chasm between shedding an identity cultivated over decades and not yet understanding what will take its place.

We are living through an era marked by profound professional change. Artificial intelligence is poised to usher millions into this “professional identity purgatory.” While I am not an economist or technologist, my personal experience and observations of peers reveal that AI’s potential threat extends beyond automating tasks or reshaping job descriptions. It attacks a more core belief: the notion that the expertise you spent a career honing still holds value. For generations, professional identity was stable—you developed specialized skills, amassed knowledge, and advanced. Technology is now shattering that continuity in deeply unsettling ways, not because jobs vanish instantly, but because one’s professional relevance begins to feel precarious. For those whose self-worth is linked to that relevance, the mere uncertainty can be profoundly destabilizing.

For individuals who have anchored their self-worth to titles, expertise, and constant advancement, this purgatory is especially harsh. We are ill-suited for holding patterns. We instinctively fill them with busyness—meetings, projects, any activity that simulates the momentum of progress. We evade the discomfort at all costs, because that discomfort demands we confront a question we’ve spent our entire careers avoiding: Who am I without my work?

What I’ve Learned (and am Still Learning) Inside Purgatory

Let me be direct: I do not have a prescribed system, tools, or advice for navigating purgatory, as I have not emerged from it. However, my time in “professional identity purgatory” has been long enough to share some insights for those who may soon find themselves here.

Stop filling voids with noise. My immediate reaction after departure was to cram my schedule with familiar activities—networking meetings, mentoring talks, advisory sessions. All were valid pursuits. All were also forms of avoidance. Purgatory is designed to be uncomfortable. It has something to communicate. The more frantically you remain occupied, the more difficult it becomes to listen to its message.

Let your identity be provisional. I still sometimes introduce myself using my old title, now prefaced with “former.” There is no disgrace in this. Forging an identity is not like installing a quick software update. The essential work of purgatory is to learn to hold your professional self with an open hand—to experiment with new iterations of yourself instead of clinging to the old version.

Redefine what expertise means. AI may automate a vast array of functions in our world. Yet it cannot replicate human judgment. It cannot build relationships. It lacks deep context. It cannot formulate the right question, only respond to the one posed. These qualities do not vanish when your title does. They simply require a new outlet.

“Professional identity purgatory” is not a mere side road. For many, it may become the most critical period of our careers—the juncture where the question we have been fleeing finally overtakes us: not “What do I do now?” but “Who am I when I’m not doing it?”

Not every professional facing AI-driven disruption in the years ahead will be suddenly unemployed. But for those who are, a stark realization will often follow: their job was intimately connected to their very sense of self. It provided the structure, the daily purpose, the identity.

When that moment arrives, the natural impulse is to flee—to occupy the emptiness, exude confidence, and secure the next opportunity with utmost speed. I have attempted all of this. I comprehend the urge.

Yet the purgatories we sprint away from are frequently the ones we most require. I remain in mine. I am weary of running. And for the first time in three decades, I am discovering what it means to simply be still.

Geoff Curtis is the former executive vice president, corporate affairs and chief communications officer at Horizon Therapeutics. Over his nearly 30-year career in health care communications, he has held various domestic and international roles on both the client and agency sides. This column is adapted from his book, Embracing Your Own Purgatory, which is available now.