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These days, tech bros keep talking about \u201ctaste\u201d<\/a>\u2014 the ability to exercise human judgment and determine unique responses while guiding a machine. It\u2019s a rare skillset, as some AI-made media automates content in the form of generic slop. And now tech professionals are the very people worried that technology will rob society of any real taste.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The <\/em>New Yorker<\/em>\u2019s Kyle Chayka<\/a>, who broke down tech bros\u2019 obsession with taste last month, coined the term \u201ctaste-washing\u201d as the act of giving \u201canti-humanist technologies a veneer of liberal humanism.\u201d In other words: giving AI properties human-like qualities and letting them run with it. When machines do all the creating, what are we left with?<\/p>\n Taste is in right now, especially in tech circles. Chayka first reported on taste and technology in a 2018 essay for Racked, now Vox, called \u201cStyle Is an Algorithm<\/a>.\u201d Chayka now points out that Y Combinator founder Paul Graham wrote<\/a> that in an AI age \u201ctaste will become even more important\u201d in an X post. OpenAI\u2019s president, Greg Brockman, agreed, sharing in an online post:<\/a> \u201cTaste is a new core skill.\u201d And Koen Bok, the founder of AI design tool Framer, said that those with \u201cgreat taste\u201d will build the next great products in a podcast<\/a> last month.<\/p>\n While many people may not necessarily equate tech bros with \u201ctaste,\u201d it is<\/em> a group known for a preferring specific style, from quarter zips to Allbirds sneakers. (And, of course, there\u2019s Steve Jobs and his custom Issey Miyake turtlenecks.)\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This trend has led some tech giants to try upholding taste themselves: Last year, Anthropic held a pop-up called \u201cZero Slop Zone\u201d in New York, handing out lattes and hats labeled \u201cthinking.\u201d Mark Zuckerberg attended a Prada show<\/a> in February, hinting at the company\u2019s interest in style and taste.\u200b<\/p>\n Despite the declared need for \u201ctaste\u201d by tech giants, and that AI is a threat to it\u2014others argue that AI can be trained to develop taste over time<\/p>\n Head of product for AI company Linear, Nan Yu, is among the critics who believe AI bots can curate taste. \u201cI hate to break this to everyone, but you probably don\u2019t have better taste than the AI,\u201d he wrote<\/a> in an X post.\u200b<\/p>\n<\/div>\n