One of my best friends was a barista in high school: over the course of the day she would make countless subtle adjustments to the espresso being made, to account for everything from the freshness of the beans to the temperature of the machine to the barometric pressure’s effect on the steam volume, meanwhile manipulating the machine with octopus-like dexterity and bantering with all manner of customers on whatever topics came up. Then she goes to college, and lands her first “real” job—rigidly procedural data entry. She thinks longingly back to her barista days—a job that actually made demands of her intelligence.

Brian Christian, The Most Human Human: What Artificial Intelligence Teaches Us About Being Alive (2011)