"Good taste is the modesty of the mind; that is why it cannot be either imitated or acquired." — Delphine de Girardin
I’ve noticed a lot of discourse online currently about taste. It’s all the rage right now. Everyone’s talking about how it’s the new “core skill.” And I agree.
But then I saw this tweet from Derek Guyt recently that hit me like a ton of freaking bricks. He said that taste has been a core economic skill since the Industrial Revolution produced material abundance. When the cost of goods dropped, consumption shifted from necessity to identity. People used taste to express who they were.
F*cking mic drop.
So no, actually. I would not call taste a “new” core skill.
But in an age where AI can generate infinite content at near-zero cost, the ability to curate, discern quality, and exercise judgment about what's worth producing has become the greatest competitive advantage.
Making things is easy now. Anyone can produce just about anything. Knowing what to make is the hard part. That's where taste comes into play.
Think about it. AI can write copy, design layouts, create images, compose music, code websites. What it cannot do is judge what's good, relevant, or emotionally resonant. It averages patterns and optimises for what worked before, sure. It can create competent mediocrity at scale.
But human taste is what moves value from execution to judgment.
Anyone can ask Claude or ChatGPT to write something. The person with taste knows which output is worth keeping, what needs refinement, and when to throw everything out and start over.
The curation actually matters more than the generation.
This becomes a differentiator in the "sea of sameness" I’ve spoken of before. AI tools generate similar outputs because they're trained on average patterns from millions of examples. Someone with unique taste can push beyond the mundane, break conventions, create something actually distinctive. While everyone else is shipping polished mediocrity, taste lets you ship something that resonates.
Taste, is the why behind the what.
It involves understanding context, audience, and emotional impact rather than just generating assets. Where AI can make ten versions of a landing page, taste tells you which one actually connects with your specific audience and why.
Executives are viewing this as essential for navigating AI-powered work. The skill becomes ensuring projects align with a specific vision rather than following algorithmic trends. Anyone can use AI to produce. Leaders with taste, however, use AI strategically to produce the right things.
The good news is taste isn't innate.
While I want to believe we’re either born with it or we’re not, taste is actually learned through experience, exposure to quality work, and what some call 1,000+ small decisions.
You build taste by making choices, seeing what works, understanding why it worked, and adjusting your judgment accordingly.
Pattern recognition comes from deep, long-term exposure to a specific field. When you've consumed enough quality work, you develop an instinct for when something is off or when something is exceptional.
You might not be able to articulate why immediately, but you know.
Restraint and editing separate good taste from mere preferences. Taste involves the discipline to sacrifice non-essential elements for a stronger final product. Knowing what to remove matters as much as knowing what to add.
Intense exposure to high-quality, diverse work builds your internal database of what good looks like. This is why it’s rare to develop taste in isolation.
You need to consume broadly and deeply in whatever field you're working in.
Some people keep taste journals - daily curation of work, images, or ideas that resonate, with analysis of why they work. Intentional curation rather than passive consumption forces you to articulate your judgment and refine it over time. I call it my Pinterest feed.
Seeking feedback also actively helps calibrate your taste against reality. Your judgment might tell you something is great. But if nobody else responds to it, that feedback matters more than anything.
Taste develops through the friction between your instinct and actual results.
In industries facing rapid AI-driven change, taste serves as a guide for originality and quality.
We're moving from a world where technical proficiency was the barrier to a world where judgment is the barrier. Derek Guy's point about the Industrial Revolution applies here too - when production became abundant and cheap, taste became how people differentiated themselves. Same pattern, different era.
The consensus across creative and technical fields is in a world where making is easy, knowing what to make becomes the most valuable asset. AI didn't create this dynamic, but it has absolutely accelerated it, dramatically.
