> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.thecollation.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Human Value of Taste: Why Discernment Matters in the AI Era and How to Develop Yours - URL: https://www.thecollation.com/the-human-value-of-taste-in-ai/ - Published: 2026-08-30T18:53:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-30T18:55:07.000Z - Description: When AI makes output infinite, Taste becomes the ultimate differentiator. Here is why discernment remains an irreducibly human skill and how to build yours. - Author: Colin Budd - Tags: AI ## What exactly is Taste (in the era of AI)? By now you’ve undoubtedly heard the term “Taste” in relation to AI. If you haven’t, consider this the **30-second need-to-know version:** > Taste is (as I hold truly, so my bias may show) an irreducibly human trait that cannot in whole be replicated nor authentically reproduced by AI, no matter how advanced. Taste is discernment. Taste is deciding what “good” looks like - and what doesn’t. Taste is both intrinsic and intangible. To have Taste, in the best equivalency, is to have distinctive vision AND the ability to well-articulate, defend, and (ideally) execute upon it. More on that below. ## **Why are we all even talking about Taste?** Back in March, during a panel at SXSW, I touched on the importance of Taste as an emerging topic and “irreducibly human” skill in the era of AI. In just a few short months, Taste has spawned into an entire discourse that appears split into two camps. The emerging debate isn't about whether taste exists, but whether it can be systematized - or if we're just overcomplicating (and over-hyping) intuition. As I see it, the surrounding discourse - positive and negative - is a good thing: We are entering an exciting moment where - as AI continues to advance and produce high quality outcomes and decisions across nearly all industries, domains, and sides of life - we as humans are beginning to identify and gain appreciation for what skills set us apart. Taste, to me, is one such skill. Easy to write-off as “vibes-based,” Taste is genuinely subjective (we all like what we like and don’t always agree), often intangible (can’t always explain why we like or don’t like it), and historically sets apart visionaries and creatives because, as you’ll soon appreciate, Taste is simply the combination of three critical skills working in unison: discernible vision, the ability to defend it, and the ability to bring it to life. Hard to imagine a better skillset - be it for AI or any area of life/work. So how do you develop and refine your Taste? How do you let your Taste set you apart - not just from AI but from others who have great Taste? It comes down to those three skills time and time again. ## Developing your Taste as a differentiated skill Three key ingredients that you need to practice, refine, and elevate in unison: ### **First,** you need to understand what you do and do not like. This is harder than it sounds. We all have preferences informed and influenced by our environments and upbringing. Being able to define clearly your style and preferences as a cohesive vision offers a level of discernment critical for taste, fundamentally speaking. ### **Second,** you need to be able to articulate well and even defend *why* you do and do not like those things. This is the hard one for many. Preferences and opinions aside, being able to put words to why something looks, sounds, feel, is “right” - especially in relation to its surrounding elements - is consequentially the most important capability to strengthen when it comes to developing taste. For instance, it is one thing to look at a room's layout and decor and make well defensible claims about the arrangement of furnishings based on feng shui. It is entirely another to be able to express (and defend) why an upcycled Victorian ottoman with burly walnut legs and reupholstered bright Western woven tuft complements the rustic, patinated espresso tan leather couch with a cream thick-knotted blanket strewn just so off one corner. (Disagree? That's the subjectivity of Taste for you.) ### **Third,** you need to be able to bring that vision into reality ("execution," by another name). You can get far with the first two alone, but what separates the *critic* from the *tastemaker* is art of acting upon and arriving at your vision. Being able to create, lead others, or otherwise direct AI to arrive at the resolved manifestation of your unique Tastes is what will set you apart and take you very, very far. The ability to realize your vision requires knowing how to work the mediums, bring together the forms, and refine/iterate until the vision is truly rendered. There's a term in creative industries called "**Creative Fatigue**" that's relevant here: essentially how many (creative) decisions you make before you get tired and call it good enough. For some, they may stop after two iterations of an output or prompt. For others - and those with great taste will live here, they'll continue for a multitude of iterations until they arrive exactly at the right, tasteful output. I never promised it would be easy but it is something you can break down into these smaller pieces and practice again and again. The good news? There’s not really right and wrong when it comes to taste - everyone will have their own subjective variant on it and some will agree with yours and others simply may not. It's that subjectivity that, in part, makes it such an irreducibly human skill. ## **Taste-Making for the AI Era** When we look back now at the relation of Taste and AI, you can see why Taste (as this comprehensive skillset) matters so much: It is a harmony of discernment, defensibility, and design - setting forth what (computed) logic alone cannot truly produce. Most importantly, Taste is also a producer of one of the most invaluable currencies today: **Authenticity.** More too on that in a second. Low hanging fruit, but let's start with a quick example: consider one of the most prevalent versions of AI output **without** the involvement of good (or any) Taste: "AI Slop." I like to define AI Slop as low-effort outputs of (a well-intentioned but probably poorly prompted) AI that are then - without any or sufficient additional effort from the prompter - passed along as a completed output ready for the limelight. AI Slop gives a sour taste to many because of the gap between effort in and requested effort back. It feels disingenuous, synthetic, and poorly executed. In many ways, AI slop is a clear case of where Taste (again: vision, defensible discernment, execution) is notably absent. Add it in and you can get some of the most beautiful, attention-worthy, mind-changing outputs that embrace so well AI as the augmentative and amplifying tool it is. Taste isn't just a critique of slop - it is the very filter that turns generic, anyone-can-do-this computation into authentic, differentiated output worthy of attention. ## **Solving The Last Mile of AI: Taste and Authenticity** One might argue AI could be trained on Taste with enough cultural and taste-setting/-making inputs (perhaps a sizable sample of Pinterest boards and copies of AD, to start). I’d offer, however, that the output would then be, at best, a well-synthesized *version* of taste definitive of that-moment…and at worst a dulled, toothless, vanilla blend that has no bite whatsoever. > The hotel art and muzak of Taste: palatable to the many, desirable by very few. Neither moves the needle to evolve what Taste can and should be and neither fully addresses one last but important piece of this puzzle: what I'd call the new “last mile problem" of AI outputs: **authenticity**. Authenticity is core to this discourse and any other regarding AI outputs. It is authenticity that continues to steer consumer behaviors, marketing decisions, strategic investments, and social media - even with AI playing such a huge part in every mile until that last one. We as humans value what feels genuine and have a heightened sense for what is disingenuous (with close approximates falling into their own uncanny valley). An authentic pitch resonates - similarly so too does authentic taste. Hype aside, Taste is a valid and critical component of achieving authenticity in your AI outputs that can sway behaviors, decisions, priorities, and beyond. ## Invest in (your) Taste We, as humans, value taste. We might not always agree with others on it nor have the (learned) vocab to explain why, but taste remains an enduring skill that is best served by humans - not AI. Regardless of whether you agree or think it is over-hyped, there’s something important within the moment here: Taste falls in a growing discourse around what skills are valuable because they are innately and irreducibly human. As AI continues to advance at such an incredible pace across expertise, industries, and our lives, it can feel tumultuous at best to gain a footing on what skills remain - or may grow more - relevant and thus where to invest time and attention. Taste, in my opinion, is absolutely one such skill. It is a direct line to achieving authenticity (a currency in its own right) and is a readily developed skill: understand what you do and don't like, be able to articulate and defend why/why not, and know how to bring that vision to reality. Anyone can and everyone should be a tastemaker. Break it down into the three steps and go get your reps in. *Thanks for reading.* ## Sign up for The Collation Enjoyed this article? 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