A bottle of wine sells for $80 in stores. The restaurant charges $400. It still sells. And people go back for more. The sommelier tells them a story about the vineyard, about a sixth-generation family continuing a tradition. Some of it might be true. It doesn’t really matter. The wine tastes better now.The diners think they’re paying for wine. What they’re actually buying is the sommelier; his vibe, his wit, his ability to make them feel like connoisseurs. The sommelier isn’t in the wine business. He’s in the curation business. More specifically, he’s in the status signalling business. Somehow, in a world where every label and tasting note can be Googled or ChatGPT-ed in seconds, his signalling and curation retain value. Sommeliers emerged as luxury goods in a world where the product (wine) was getting commoditized, and curation was the new differentiator. That’s exactly where jobs are headed.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. In a world where knowledge is cheap, curiosity, curation, and judgment - signalled well - becomes insanely valuable.That’s what the sommelier sells. And that’s where the rest of us are headed.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.So if AI gets increasingly better at more knowledge work, where does value really sit?Whenever the question of AI’s impact on jobs comes up, the common answer on LinkedIn or on conference panels goes something like this:AI will never have the human touch. With all this AI, humans will become more valuable tha