Matter of taste

Taste is trending in Silicon Valley. Usually, taste is part of aesthetics and is about art and beauty. But Silicon Valley uses a broader definition. They include cultural awareness and understanding of good product design. It’s an interesting development. So, I thought to explore it.

California likes this concept because taste is an excellent differentiator, especially when artificial intelligence homogenizes everything. The idea is: hire people who understand what is current and trendy, then let technology build it. Pitfalls aside, almost anyone can “vibe-code” anything, but no AI language model can understand what matters culturally.

Some people say AI can learn that cultural understanding through training, but they misunderstand what taste really is. Large Language Models (obviously) lack the embodied foundation to understand culture. Instead they parrot statistically likely combinations of words. A machine will not develop taste, because taste is not objective knowledge.

More Than Just Personal Preference

Taste is more than what one person’s gut reaction to quality and standards. “She has good taste” means we agree she can recognize in something what experts and people in the same cultural context also understand as ‘good’.

Taste develops through learning, experience, and understanding social context. First, educators show the basic rules (heuristics) of the group’s aesthetic: a framework to think with. Once you have a teacher’s foundation, you’d need to practice and expose yourself to many examples of good quality.

When you get proficient to recognizing certain aspects, your more complex perception kicks in. You start seeing things in new ways. Knowledge, experience, and intuition help you enjoy what you’re experiencing more deeply—often with more detail than someone new to it. Eventually you develop specialized vocabularies and habits that help you notice more in the work. You’ll start comparing different works, talk with experts, and try similar forms yourself.

Over time, these activities make your intuition stronger and more personal. This comes with enhanced emotional resonance, understanding of originality, and cultural depth. Then influencers (like artists) share new ideas that change what people think is good quality, so taste keeps changing. This one of the reasons I am worried about AI and the arts; if AI takes over, who is going to be the taste maker, the trendsetter?

Taste evolves in every area and often influences other areas (for example, music affects fashion). Programmers learn to spot good code, musicians develop “an ear,” and designers recognize quality beyond just theory. Taste is what makes us different from machines; it is something only humans have. I will watch our tech leaders misrepresent it and turn it into a product to sell.