One of them said: "With this thing, when the boss asks for a banner, I just click a button and it’s done in five minutes. The rest of the time I can scroll TikTok."

The whole group burst out laughing and kept chatting about a future of "easy work, high pay."

I didn’t have the heart to spoil their mood. But as someone who has worked in technology management for more than 20 years, I have plenty of concerns.

We are facing a harsh paradox of the digital age. AI was not created to let people slack off. On the contrary, it will force us to work much, much harder.

Many people mistakenly think of AI as a diligent "helper" that does the grunt work so humans can relax. In reality, AI is a "standard-raising machine."

In the past to write an ad, draft a contract or sketch a design, you needed four hours to reach a six-out-of-ten level. That was good enough to keep your job and earn your salary. Now tools like ChatGPT or Claude can produce that same six-point output in thirty seconds.

By 2026 agentic AI systems such as Manus and other autonomous tools will be able to plan tasks, write code and design banners on their own in just a few minutes.

But to reach a nine or ten out of ten, humans still have to review the work, refine the strategy and take final responsibility.

What does that mean? It means the value of being "average" has dropped to zero.

Your boss or your clients will not pay for something that can be generated for free with a single click.

So, to survive, you are forced to push your work from a six to a nine or 10, and that is where human thinking, emotion and contextual understanding still matter.

Going from zero to six mostly requires diligence. Going from six to ten demands reflection and strategic thinking. That is the first reason you will have to work more, or at least work smarter.

A person is using AI for work. Illustration photo by Pexels

As AI takes over execution, humans are pushed into management roles.

Imagine you are a programmer. In the past you typed every line of code yourself.

Now AI writes the code for you, but you must read it, understand it, check for bugs, connect different pieces, and take responsibility for the security of the entire system.

Instead of coding by hand, programmers now manage agents, review outputs, debug logic, and ensure safety. They are more like architects than bricklayers.

When AI’s productive capacity is effectively unlimited, the bottleneck is now human decision-making and evaluation.

With the same eight-hour workday, instead of writing a handful of emails, you might oversee an automated campaign sending 100 emails. Instead of serving five customers, you might run a system that serves five thousand.

The workload does not get smaller. It simply moves from physical effort to mental pressure. The greater the responsibility, the heavier the fatigue. That is the price of productivity.

If this future sounds bleak, here is the good news: The labor market will be extremely generous to those who can play the game.

In economics, there is the concept called "leverage". It’s a tool or technology that multiplies human effort and produces output far beyond individual capacity. History proves this.

AI is the greatest form of leverage of the 21st century, global in scale and spreading faster than anything before it.

One employee who knows how to use AI effectively can produce as much as an entire department of five to seven people working the old way.

At its core, a business is a machine designed to optimize profit. If I were a business owner, instead of hiring five average employees with a total payroll of $4,000, I would happily pay $2,000 for one "super employee" who uses AI to deliver the same output.

That worker earns five times the usual income, while the company still cuts costs by half. A true win-win.

But to earn that income, the so-called super employee cannot afford an easy life. They must constantly reskill, accept intense mental workloads, and compete not only with ever-smarter algorithms but also with countless other super employees using the same tools to push themselves forward.

AI is no longer an exclusive advantage. Anyone can access it. Anyone can give themselves "superpowers." The real difference lies in who uses it more wisely, thinks more creatively and adapts faster in a field where everyone has similar leverage.

That is why the reward does not go to the person who gets AI first, but to the one who turns AI into a natural extension of their own thinking, faster, deeper and more distinctive than the crowd still learning the basics.

AI is like a flood that lifts large ships higher but also drowns those that stand still.

Do not daydream about a future where AI lets us work four hours a week, as self-help books like to promise.

Prepare instead for a fiercer race, one where we work many times harder, not with brute force, but with sharper minds.

The prize at the finish line will be worth it. But it is not meant for those who hope to coast along doing nothing.