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You Had No Taste Before AI

matthewsanabria.dev

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Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#11

Post by Forgeties79 »

OhioMan2943 wrote: post #5

I'm not a fan of this clickbaity trend where the author pretends everyone else is as insufferably boring as they are in order to have an argument.

Just like with Youtubers, people will stop these practices when people stop clicking on them.

It’s very easy for us to tell people to just not do that stuff, but I can tell you from my podcast production days that these annoying trends are often the difference between a 20% rise and a 20% drop in audience. No different than a clever book title turning heads.

To be clear, I find most of these trends incredibly obnoxious and I hated indulging them.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#12

Post by AndrewKemendo »

> There’s been an influx of people telling others to develop taste to use AI.

Can someone point out where this influx is happening?

The author doesn’t provide any references to this trend so I’m a bit confused why this is a big issue, as it’s literally the first time I’ve ever heard of it

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#14

Post by kraftman »

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote: post #9

While I am not sure I actually agree with the author, I think he touched on something interesting. LLM is probably the first tool, where I consciously adapted to using it. For better or worse, it can change you and you get to pick direction of that change. edit: As I am thinking about it more, it may be function of age. I am picking up some additional hobbies now and my whole approach has become much more intentional…

did you not adapt to google search by just typing keywords you know will get results instead of typing full sentences about what you're searching for?

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#15

Post by qsort »

Eh, kind of.

In a way, AI does not change at all the problem of having taste. There are more books you'll ever read, movies you'll ever watch, games you'll ever play, software you'll ever use. I remain completely unconvinced that "dead internet/dead youtube" is a problem: you had to filter before, you have to filter now.

What AI does, being highly weird technology, is that it destroys heuristics. Good English used to be one. It used to take effort to write coherent sentences, that's now gone. Code even just compiling used to be evidence that someone at least made the effort to satisfy the type checker. That's gone as well.

I do see an argument that taste, a critical attitude and a good "bullshit detector" are now more important than ever.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#16

Post by MontyCarloHall »

Most people equate "having taste" to "having good taste," but this article nicely illustrates that this is a false equivalence. "Having taste" simply means valuing forming one's opinions autonomously. As the author writes:

   Tasteless content [manifests] as the following:

   — Copying and pasting code without understanding it.
   — Designing websites that look exactly like every other company’s website.
   — Regurgitating content from the trending influencer of the week.

   Where’s the taste here? Where’s the critical judgment, discernment, or appreciation of aesthetic quality that separates mediocrity from excellence?
Good taste/bad taste is a subjective function of societal consensus, but having taste/not having taste is objective: you either think for yourself or you don't. Furthermore, the two are uncorrelated: one can have a very strong sense of taste but have it commonly regarded as "bad taste." Contrariwise, it's possible (but harder) to have no sense of taste and merely copy what most would regard as "good taste" and be perceived as having "good taste."

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#17

Post by philipp-gayret »

I very often hear from developers at clients I work with that code they (not me) generate with AI is not of enough "quality".

So I ask them what quality means. So far, I only get the most basic feedback: it should be in X style, pass Y linter, have N% coverage, have documentation...

At the same time, most, if not all manually written repositories do not pass the newfound quality metrics that must apply to AI code to be quality. I'm glad people are thinking about it at least, but let's not pretend like we cared before when it took manual labour. I'm even more glad we are in an age where quality standards can be fully automated.

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#19

Post by jsharpe »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #16

Most people equate "having taste" to "having good taste," but this article nicely illustrates that this is a false equivalence. "Having taste" simply means valuing forming one's opinions autonomously. As the author writes: Tasteless content [manifests] as the following: — Copying and pasting code without understanding it. — Designing websites that look exactly like every other company’s website. — Regurgitating conte…

> Contrariwise, it's possible (but harder) to have no sense of taste and merely copy what most would regard as "good taste" and be perceived as having "good taste."

Not only possible, but exactly what AI does. :)

Re: You Had No Taste Before AI

#20

Post by CGMthrowaway »

As someone who works with a lot of creatives, I've noticed people tend to get really defensive and self-righteous anytime "taste" comes up, on both sides - the haute designer-types vs. the scrappy I-can-do-it types. So I won't be surprised if this post is controversial. But it's insightful.

Having poor taste (or more charitably, having no taste) can be covered up or ignored by the ability to choose from a pre-curated tasteful menu of options. This is what happens when people who "hate shopping" pick a mainstream clothing brand and stick with it. Or pick a car (most of them). Or a frying pan. I've never seen an offensively ugly frying pan. You could pick one out blindfolded and end up OK 100% of the time.

But when you put a tool like generative AI into this person's hands, they are exposed. The palette of possibilities is open. The curation is on you. And if someone with taste isn't in the mix, it will ultimately become apparent when you share your creation with the world.

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