The challenge, then, isn’t to beat the machines but to learn to work meaningfully alongside them. Every major leap in technology has shifted what counted as valuable work, and this one is no different. What endures is not the particular task but the capacity to judge, to choose, and to care about the outcome. That capacity—the human ability to turn means into purpose—is what anchors progress. AI will keep spreading, but meaning still begins where judgment does: in the mind of the person deciding what is worth doing at all.