“Resistance Is Not Futile”: The Making of the New Marginal Person

On 13 May 2025, Microsoft announced that it would lay off approximately 6,000 employees, or about 3% of its global workforce; this despite reporting stronger-than-expected results with $25.8 billion in quarterly net income. Nearly 2,000 of those cuts occurred in Washington state, with the majority centered in Redmond. The company cited reorganization and restructuring as the reason for the cuts.

Although the company didn’t explicitly attribute the layoffs to AI, the timing, just weeks after CEO Satya Nadella revealed that AI now writes up to 30% of Microsoft’s code, raises compelling questions. It’s difficult to ignore the broader context: across industries, organizations are restructuring while accelerating AI adoption. This convergence may signal a seismic shift in how businesses define value and deploy human talent.

How do people respond to a world increasingly shaped by AI? Algorithms can now perform many of the tasks we once considered uniquely ours: drafting “good enough” emails, recording and summarizing meeting notes, processing data at lightning speed, and even generating ideas.

Do we reject the shift entirely? Assimilate fully, reshaping ourselves in AI’s image? Or do we pursue a third path — embracing the benefits of machine capabilities while preserving what makes us uniquely human?

The challenge we face is not merely technological; it’s existential, psychological and deeply human. The question isn’t merely what AI can do, but what we, as humans, should do in response. To explore this, I’ll revisit the concept of the Marginal Man, introduced in the 1930s by sociologists Robert E. Park and Everett Stonequist to describe individuals caught between two cultures. I repurpose the framework to describe those of us now navigating the blurred boundary between human and machine. In this new context, we are not immigrants between nations, but migrants between worlds: the human and AI.

The Original “Marginal Man”

To understand how we might navigate this divide, it helps to look back at another kind of in-betweenness. The concept of the “marginal man” originated with sociologist Robert E. Park and was later expanded by his student Everett Stonequist in The Marginal Man: A Study in Personality and Culture Conflict (1937). Typically, a second-generation immigrant, the marginal man lived between two cultures: the traditions of his parents’ homeland and the expectations of his new society.

But he wasn’t merely between cultures; he embodied the friction of that in-betweenness. As Stonequist wrote, the marginal man is “poised in psychological uncertainty between two or more social worlds, reflecting in his soul the discords and harmonies, repulsions and attractions of these worlds.” Marginality in a Pluralistic Society. This duality fostered creativity, critical thinking, insight, yet also alienation, rootlessness and psychological strain.

Although the theory was grounded in migration and assimilation, its reach is broader. It speaks to anyone negotiating competing identities and seeking meaning in the space between.

The New Marginal Person in the Age of AI

Today, we’re witnessing the rise of a new marginal figure — no longer defined by culture, but by technology. This person lives at the threshold between human and machine.

Think of a software engineer working alongside AI copilots, a designer co-creating with generative models, or a knowledge worker whose role is increasingly shaped by algorithms. Like their cultural predecessors, today’s marginal person straddles two realms: one grounded in ethics, emotion and intuition; and the other governed by logic, data and optimization. This framework is especially applicable to knowledge-intensive industries undergoing rapid digital transformation.

But while the cultural marginal man could move toward assimilation, today’s version faces a deeper dilemma. Unlike cultural assimilation, there is no final integration here. You can’t become a machine, and you can’t stop being human. The challenge is not to resolve the tension, but to navigate it: to translate, adapt and bridge the blurred boundary between our humanity and the tools we’ve created.

Thriving in this liminal space demands fluency in both worlds, mastering the machine’s language without losing human values. This dual perspective isn’t just an emotional burden; it’s a rare and rising advantage. The ability to hold opposing truths is more than a survival skill — it’s a superpower.

Adaptation at the Intersection

This isn’t just a theory to me; it’s an identity I’ve carried most of my life. My personal story echoes the original marginal man, and now helps me understand the modern version. As someone who immigrated to the United States at a young age, I was raised by Vietnamese parents while growing up in American society. I never actively chose to either reject or fully assimilate into American culture. My identity was formed out of necessity — learning English, navigating American institutions, and absorbing its norms, all while holding onto aspects of my Vietnameseness. For example, I never felt compelled to adopt an American name, even when its unfamiliarity created friction. Instead, I found a way to help others approximate its pronunciation — a small but meaningful act of preserving identity while making space for others to meet me halfway.

Over the past year, I’ve watched many of my peers wrestle with the challenge of adapting to a future shaped by the intersection of human judgment and machine intelligence. In a race to stay relevant, they’re diving into machine learning, AI and large language models. I’ve done the same: studying generative AI, learning prompt engineering and mapping data landscapes.

Learning prompt engineering, for example, felt like learning English all over again — awkward and disorienting at first, then gradually empowering. My initial ChatGPT query returned a generic, unhelpful response. It wasn’t until I gave clear, specific instructions with proper context that the tool became useful. Language is still the key to entry, the passport that grants access to this new world.

But language is just the beginning. Just as the original marginal man lived between two cultures, today’s new marginal person stands between the human and machine worlds. Thriving at this intersection requires more than technical skills. It requires new ways of thinking, being and relating.

How to Thrive as a New Marginal Person

Here are five strategies to help you thrive while living between logic and emotion, code and conscience:

1. Dual Fluency: Speak Both Human and Machine

- Understand data, logic and models.
- Preserve emotion, story and context.
- Bridge these realms with clarity and care.

Example: A product manager working on an AI hiring tool translates vague HR concerns like “the model feels biased” into actionable changes (e.g., debiasing data, adding explainability features). She also explains technical limitations in plain language, helping non-technical partners make informed decisions.

2. Reflexive Adaptation: Stay Flexible, Stay Grounded

- Regularly question your assumptions.
- Stay curious but don’t chase hype.
- Evolve methods without losing sight of the ‘why.’

Example: A data analyst uses ChatGPT to speed up reporting. When she sees the team relying too heavily on AI summaries, she reinstitutes manual reviews for key insights, balancing efficiency with depth.

3. Ethics and Empathy First: Keep Humans at the Center

- Consider impact, not just innovation.
- Design for inclusion and accountability.
- Use your voice to elevate others.

Example: A product manager pauses an AI hiring tool’s launch after discovering demographic bias. She invites diverse testers to evaluate the system and updates the model, prioritizing fairness over speed.

4. Cognitive Ambidexterity: Embrace Paradox

- Zoom out and zoom in.
- Balance intuition with data.
- Embrace complexity.

Example: A doctor uses AI to flag potential diagnoses but trusts her gut instinct when the data doesn’t align with a patient’s story. She honors both machine insight and human nuance.

5. Curated Presence: Shape What Shapes You

- Be intentional about what you consume.
- Share your values and perspective.
- Write your digital identity. Don’t let it write you

Example: An analyst follows diverse thinkers and shares posts blending personal values with professional insight, intentionally shaping what trains the algorithm and inspires others.

Conclusion

Resistance isn’t futile; in fact, it’s formative. We will never fully belong in the machine world, but in that in-betweenness lies the power to shape something entirely new. The future doesn’t just ask us to adapt; it asks us to decide who we want to be. So, what will you become at the intersection of human and machine?

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