ChatGPT churns out flawless sonnets in seconds. Gemini? It'll debug your code or pen a screenplay without breaking a sweat. Yet here's the kicker: why can't these bots actually replace desk jobs?

Sure, they mimic creativity—poetic lines, functional scripts, even passable essays. But strip away the hype, and you'll see the cracks. They stumble on context. Nuance? Forget it. Ask them to navigate office politics, juggle conflicting priorities, or make a judgment call when the rulebook runs out. Silence.

The gap isn't about raw intelligence. It's adaptability. White-collar work demands improvisation, reading between lines, and connecting dots that weren't supposed to form a picture. AI excels at patterns it's seen. Throw it a curveball—something messy, human, unprecedented—and it freezes.

Maybe the real question isn't when AI catches up. It's whether the work we're protecting is worth clinging to in the first place.