The AI Tastetrap

There’s a growing consensus that what will set humans apart from AI is *taste* – because apparently, AI could never. Here's what the conversation is missing.

What’s going on?

“Human taste is the one thing AI can never master.”

It’s a take I’ve seen a lot over the past few months, especially across LinkedIn, Substack, and TikTok. The argument goes that taste, rooted in human intuition and experience, can’t be synthesized.

What’s driving it?

AI panic. People are losing jobs to AI, and many are delegating more decision-making, tasks, output, and thinking to LLMs (including of course students letting AI do their coursework – but their instructors have now been found equally guilty). All this makes the need to cling to what remains uniquely human freshly urgent. It’s what all the “how to future-proof your career in the age of AI” advice comes down to: find what AI can’t do, and build your value there.

Against this context, taste feels like a safe bet.

Gael Pineiro Beiras (El Media)

makes an especially compelling case for the importance of taste as the creative differentiator: she defines it* not just as instinct but a form of authorship, with a mix of historical awareness, curatorial discernment, and lived experience. In a world of infinite content, the ability to choose what matters is a creative act in itself.

That’s all true. But we still need to ask: Who gets to decide what counts as good taste?

What does it mean?

No one acquites taste in isolation – it’s shaped by (and reflects) established systems of power. This means that when we treat taste as a differentiator, we also have to ask: who gets to do the differentiating? The fact that taste isn’t neutral is often framed as a strength, but there’s a real risk that the loudest or most established voices’ taste ends up defining “good taste.”

With tools like Perplexity able to back up almost any claim (and a narrative ready for every counternarrative) it’s easier than ever to dress up opinions and feelings as facts. All this means that relying on taste alone doesn’t lead us to insight or action – it just makes it harder to tell what’s grounded in substance.

Final takeaway

If we want to protect what makes us human in an AI context, we need more than just refined judgment – we need critical thinking, cultural awareness, and a willingness to examine what’s shaping our taste in the first place.