Feed—5.10.2025
The Rise of Taste: Why Human Curation Will Define the AI Era
The world is drowning in digital content. Every platform, every scroll, every second—more inputs, more noise, more things trying to hook your attention. The old metrics of intelligence—who memorized the most, who spoke the loudest, who finished the book first—don’t mean much here.
Artificial intelligence has fundamentally transformed creation. AI can design interfaces, write narratives, compose music, and generate code at unprecedented scale and speed. The barriers that once made creation laborious have largely evaporated—what required years of training can now be accomplished in minutes with the right prompt.
This democratization creates both opportunity and challenge. The same technology that empowers anyone to become a creator floods the market with overwhelming content volume. Every day, millions of AI-generated articles, images, videos, and applications enter the digital ecosystem. The ease of creation has led to exponential output increases, creating a paradox: as our ability to make things has expanded, our ability to find meaning within that abundance has become increasingly critical.
“In a world of scarcity, we treasure tools. In a world of abundance, we treasure taste.”
Anu Atluru, Taste Is Eating Silicon Valley
The challenge has shifted from scarcity to abundance. The question is no longer whether we can create something, but whether we should—and which creations deserve our attention and investment. This places unprecedented value on curation and discernment. The ability to navigate endless possibilities and identify what truly matters—"taste"—has emerged as perhaps the most crucial skill in our AI-augmented future.
Keeping Human Judgement at the Center
Understanding AI's limitations reveals why human taste becomes so valuable. Current AI systems operate as pattern recognition engines, excelling at analyzing datasets and generating combinations based on learned patterns. They're powerful execution tools but lack capacity for independent judgment about value and meaning. Simply put, the machines don’t have the human agency, that will and drive to do something.
AI creates by reflecting what has come before, drawing from training data representing past human decisions. This makes it excellent at producing familiar, professionally executed content, but limits genuine originality. It can perfect existing styles but cannot determine when those styles should evolve or be abandoned.
AI is a mirror—reflecting accurately but providing no direction. Humans must serve as the compass, providing orientation toward chosen destinations. This creates enormous value for individuals who can provide clear direction and judgment while leveraging AI's execution capabilities.
But What is Taste, Really?
Taste is often dismissed as something shallow or subjective. But at its core, it’s a form of literacy—a way of reading the world. Good taste isn’t about being right. It’s about being attuned. To rhythm, to proportion, to vibe. It’s knowing when something is off, even if you can’t fully articulate why.
Taste isn’t just an opinion. It's a skill built through exposure, study, critical thinking, and lived experience. It’s cultural fluency, emotional intelligence, historical awareness, and a sensitivity to quality.
Taste is a responsibility. It’s not just about what you like. It’s about what you allow in. Taste is how you protect your mental environment. Taste is how you organize your inner world. What you let in. What you keep out.
Good taste is deep structure. It’s the throughline in someone’s life. You can see it in the design of their home, the cadence of their speech, the way they treat people, the books on their shelves.
Taste means alignment. You can change your mind. Explore new spaces. But your values stay intact. Your center holds. It’s commonly mistaken as personal preference, but it’s more than that — it’s a trained instinct. But how you cultivate taste and train that instinct?
Developing Taste
Designers should study great designs, writers should consume great literature, strategists should examine successful campaigns. Identify respected practitioners in your field, discover who they admire, and build a curated list of tastemakers. Surround yourself with their work—study their designs, use their products, read their writing. Learning from the best accelerates your own development.
“Ultimately, it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you're doing.”
Steve Jobs, Apple
Don't simply label work as good or bad based on gut feeling. Instead, rationalize why something resonates. If you're a designer, don't just use apps—dissect why specific interactions feel satisfying. If you're a filmmaker, consider why directors made particular choices. Move beyond surface-level appreciation to deep curiosity about what makes something exceptional. This analytical approach develops the pattern recognition essential to sophisticated taste.
Practice your craft consistently. Designers must design, writers must write. Creation transforms you from judge to tastemaker. Seek critique from knowledgeable sources—good feedback accelerates growth faster than trial and error alone. Your early work likely won't meet your standards, but that gap between your taste and your ability is actually positive. It means your judgment is already ahead of your execution. This discomfort is temporary and necessary. Persist through it, and your skills will eventually match your taste.
The Future for Innovation Leaders
As AI capabilities expand, the premium on distinctly human forms of value will likely increase. The ability to provide direction, meaning, and curation in an environment of infinite possibility becomes more precious as it becomes rarer.
Those who thrive will successfully combine AI's generative capabilities with sophisticated human judgment about purpose, quality, and meaning. They'll serve as bridges between human needs and AI capabilities, translating complex cultural requirements into executable directions.
This places enormous responsibility on taste developers and innovation leaders. Their decisions shape not just commercial outcomes but cultural development and social discourse. In a world where machines can create anything, those who decide what should be created carry unprecedented influence over human culture.
The most valuable skill may not be the ability to create, but the wisdom to know what's worth creating—and the taste to make that judgment well.
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