Why Tech Thinkers Say Taste Is The Ultimate AI-Proof Skill (And 3 Ways To Grow Yours)

This article by Jessica Stillman was originally published on Inc.com.

“With artificial intelligence (AI) continuing to dominate corporate strategies and news headlines, Silicon Valley has embraced a new buzzword,” Kyle Chayka wrote recently in The New Yorker. “That word is ‘taste.’”

“Taste is a new core skill,” insisted Open AI president Greg Brockman. Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham claims that taste “will become even more important.” Or as entrepreneur Cong Wang put it in a blog post: “In the AI era, personal taste is the moat.”

Everywhere you look, august publications and some of the tech industry’s top thinkers are arguing that the best way for humans to stay competitive against the machines is to have great taste.

This is, to put it mildly, not a skill tech bros or MBA types—with their enthusiasm for fleece vests, dorky virtual reality (VR) glasses, and legless avatars—have historically been known for (Steve Jobs being the glaring exception). Now, all of a sudden, an ability that’s traditionally been the province of artists and hipsters is being sold as the key to all of our professional survival.

Should you panic? How do you even start developing taste if you’ve rarely given it much thought? Best-selling author Dan Pink has a few suggestions.

‘Taste is your killer app’

In his recent commencement speech at Ohio’s Columbus College of Art & Design, Pink joined a long line of successful people who have recently decided that college majors once derided as impractical are now teaching skills that will be in high demand thanks to AI.

“Over the last four years at this amazing place, you built skills in animation, in fashion, in film, in photography, graphic design, games, fine art,” he observes. “But what you might not realize is that thanks to all of that, you have achieved something more important. You have developed taste. Aesthetic judgment. A point of view.”

Taste, he assured his listeners, “will save you. It might even save us,” because “in an age of artificial intelligence, taste will be your killer app.”

How instant mashed potatoes taught Dan Pink taste

Pink is a hugely engaging writer, but as a Midwestern-born guy with a law degree, he’s hardly the first person you’d think of when you think “great taste.” An intimidating SoHo gallerist or fashion show regular he is not. But that’s just what makes him qualified to offer advice to normies looking to level up their taste. Pink is one of us.

In fact, the story of his own road to having taste could not be more down-to-earth. During his Midwest childhood, his mother always served Hungry Jack instant mashed potatoes, which, as a kid, he enjoyed mightily.

That is, until an elderly relative served him “the best mashed potatoes I had ever eaten. Smooth, fluffy, creamy, substantial, savory, rib-sticking. They were glorious.” What brand of flakes produced this magic, he wondered? But a little snooping in the kitchen showed that the answer was none.

“There was no box. My elderly relative had made the dish using some kind of prehistoric wizardry. She had bought potatoes. Real potatoes. She boiled them. Then she mashed them with a masher. She added butter. Real butter. And cream. Real cream. And salt. And she stirred it together,” he relates.

In that moment, he learned he had “preferences. A point of view. An emerging sense that some things in the world were good, and others were less good, and this distinction mattered.” He had developed the first rudiments of taste, in other words.

3 steps to better taste

Anyone looking to hone their own taste can go on a similar journey using similarly humble experiences, he insists. Haunting avant-garde art exhibitions and chasing underground trends isn’t required. Instead, Pink suggests three super accessible principles that can help anyone cultivate taste:

• Creation beats consumption: “People develop taste by making things, not by watching things,” he insists. Yes, you need to experience other people’s great work to train your eye (or ear or palate). But that’s not enough. You also need to try your hand at creation yourself. (Spoiler: most of what you make will be terrible at first. That’s OK.)
• Taste is the courage to say no: If you like the same things as everyone else, Pink regrets to inform you that you do not have taste. “Taste is a form of moral courage,” he says. “It takes a stand, and part of taking a stand is saying no. No, that’s not good enough. No, that’s not for me.” To develop taste, you need to care enough to declare your preference even if other people disagree.
• If your tastes don’t change, you have no taste: An art student has wasted their time at school if they like the same things on their first day as on the day they graduate. The same applies to all of us. “The creators who matter over a lifetime … [are] the ones who stayed restless, who kept being surprised, unsettled, challenged, who treated their own taste not as a finished product but as a lifelong practice,” Pink claims. Taste is a moving target.

Curiosity, courage, openness

Cultivating taste, in other words, comes down to having the curiosity to taste those weird-looking potatoes, the courage to declare them even better than your mom’s, a willingness to try to recreate the magic in your own kitchen, and finally an openness to, one day down the road, finding an even more delicious way to cook your spuds.

Now that’s not so hard, is it?