For most of human history, physical strength was the barrier holding back progress. Then when the Industrial Revolution took over the heavy lifting, physical power became cheaper, and value moved to what we could achieve with our minds, not with our limbs. Now AI is doing for brainpower what machines did for muscles, amplifying intellectual output. But as intelligence becomes abundant, value will move again—this time toward the heart, that squishy catch-all for judgment, intuition, taste, self-knowledge, creativity, and wisdom.
For while our networks are turning neural, we can't yet replicate the follies of the heart. AI is excellent where success can be verified—but the work that matters rarely has a verifiable answer. What strategy should a company pursue? Which product deserves to exist? What idea should we stand behind? More intelligence cannot resolve these questions. AI can tell us what is probable, but it cannot tell us what is worth wanting.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't embrace advancement. We should automate whatever can be automated without feeling nostalgic. The old world of work was not great, after all; no one should spend their one wild and precious life manually processing insurance claims. We should treat every task machines take over as attention handed back to us. The question is whether we use that attention to manufacture even more work, or reinvest it in our squishy skills: cultivating taste, trusting our judgment, making decisions without certainty, and caring about something enough to take responsibility for it.
If the last age of work belonged to the brain, the next belongs to the heart.
