AI may not take away work. But it might take away your excuse for being generic.

As AI takes over increasing chunks of knowledge work, what cannot be taken over becomes more valuable. These attributes become the defining feature of premium work.

AI doesn’t make human work irrelevant. It just reshuffles where the value sits .

When knowledge becomes abundant, value migrates to the functions that exist upstream and downstream from it: framing the inquiry and acting on the output.

In this new architecture, curiosity, curation, and judgment create real advantage.

What the sommeliers figured out, before the rest of us eventually do, is that value is not in giving people more information. It’s in giving them confidence in a moment of uncertainty, making them feel like connoisseurs even if this is the first sip they’ve ever had.

This is why even if AI doesn’t eat your job, it will take a nice chunky bite out of your salary.

And the reason for that is fairly simple. You can keep performing tasks that provide value. But those tasks won’t have economic value.