Humans set the benchmark wherever effort, skill, and mastery are required. When new technologies mechanize what once demanded those qualities, the benchmark doesn’t disappear—it moves.
For a time, we’ll lament the loss of human expression in activities that have become automated. We always do. But those complaints tend to fade as we discover new domains where excellence remains difficult, rare, and unmistakably human. The frontier of mastery shifts upward, and eventually our standards shift with it.
What we value is not any particular task. We value the pursuit of mastery itself.