Where Are We Moving Our Value? Chaotic Thoughts on the Threshold of 2026.
This year, a news story broke, somewhere in the background, about a study from Microsoft, or a team of their researchers. It said that AI would put a muzzle on a long list of jobs, especially knowledge jobs. It was a list that seemed... strange at the time. People laughed: "How about writers disappear? Or journalists? Let machines write our love poems for us?"
Well, we're not laughing now. It's strange, right?
It's not the first or the last list, but this one came right when AI started to be useful. Not just a toy, but a partner who gets the job done faster. And, naturally, we look at it and think: okay, but where do i fit into this equation?
I'm generally not an analyst, i'm not a programmer, i'm not a web designer, i'm not on the list of those directly threatened, nor of those mega-protected. I'm somewhere in the middle, in the gray area. And i think that's where most people actually stand.
What strikes me about this list is that it doesn't target the wrong work, the physical work, but redundant work. I've heard that Translators are the first. But it's not the man who translates a poem that disappears, but the man who translates 500 technical manuals full of clichés. That work, of taking a block of information and moving it coherently into another language, is a problem of logic. AI has solved it.
The same goes for dry news Journalists or Financial Analysts who just run some formulas on old data. All their value was based on quick access to information and rigid structure. The machine does this at cosmic speed.
I guess i could say that AI has actually slapped us all in the face, saying, "Hey, you guys have been paid a lot to do robotic tasks, but with brains. I'm setting you free."
And that's the confrontation, you know? You feel empty. If i'm no longer paid to synthesize information, then what am i paid for? For opinions? For questions? It's a mutation of professional identity more than anything.
On the other hand, you look at the list of those who are safe, and you feel like you're on the ground. I recomand the near link to see in detailed that big list...AI threatens to eliminate 40 job roles, according to Microsoft's latest research finding — Is your career safe?
Plumbers, Masons, Electricians. Why? Because reality is ugly. It's not clean and organized. Taking apart an old wall, feeling where the broken pipe is, fighting rust and improvisations from 20 or 30 years ago... it's a problem that requires physical presence and raw improvisation. The effort to create a robot that can do this is simply unfeasible, and it wouldn't do it any better than a good human.
Here's the unexpected value - in jobs that have inherent danger, dirt, and physical exertion. It's a fantastic irony: our brains have devalued, but our hands and our adaptability to chaotic physical space have become more valuable.
Then there's the part with the soul... Nurses, Masseurs, Therapists... the list goes on. It's not just about diagnosis (AI is good at that), it's about touch. Sitting next to someone when they're sick. Feeling their fear. Listening to them. That's not a task, it's a connection. In the future, the one thing we won't be able to easily buy is warm human presence, unfiltered by a screen.
And then, what do we, those of us in the gray area, do? We look at the jobs that will emerge. That's the beauty, but also the unknown. Yep😁 supposedly new jobs would emerge that don't even exist right now.
Truth Curator: AI produces tons of content. It's perfect, but it's boring and sometimes fake. As it turns out, there will be a need for people to be the Guardians of Authenticity. People who don't write, they choose. Who say: "This text is beautiful, but is it ethical? It lacks that bitter humor that only a human understands."
Machine Psychologist (Prompt Engineer, but we're not talking about code): This job is not about writing code, it's about writing a letter of intent to the machine. You have to know how to challenge the algorithm, to get it out of the mold, to ask it for an idea you didn't know you wanted. It's like learning to talk to a super-intelligent alien: you have to use empathy and narrative logic, not just syntax.
Emotional Interaction Design: As AI takes over repetitive tasks, our most important work remains - to design experiences that make us feel... good. To make interfaces that don't just work, but that understand us. That's the work of the meaning maker, the applied philosopher.
I don't know, but value is shifting from being efficient like a robot to being essential like a human. And our battle now, on the threshold of 2026, is to find our place not in what we know how to do, but in what we feel and what we can improvise. It's a revolution of the soul, packaged in a report from Microsoft. And i think it's the most exciting moment in the history of work.