HN

Ask HN: What's the Fuzz about Taste?

pls-dnt-deploy · 2 hours ago

For different reasons in the last 2 weeks I've found myself speaking to CTOs / CPOs that believe "Taste" is the main distinction and value a human brings to the process in a LLM/Generative AI world.

I'm simply not getting it, and I don't know what I'm missing.

+ Self-driving as an example: We only really care if it drives better or equal to a human. So no taste applies there, once the standards are met.

Don't get me wrong, I understand (and share) that we use a concept of "taste" to actually mean "there is no enough data for the model to give a right answer", and the "judgement we introduce after years of living may be better". But I don't buy into the idea that exercising that decision (our free will if we may), is the actual difference simple because it is perceived as less stochastic.

So, is taste another way of saying you still know better? Or am I truly, and likely, missing something here?

PS: Apologies for overly simplifying the concept.

1 comments

odomojuli · 1 hours ago
Emily Segal has excellent reporting on 'tasteslop'
https://nemesisglobal.substack.com/p/tasteslop
More practically, people who work at AI startups are starting to realize that money and power can't fix everything and they are being met with hostility.
I have met several people working at frontier labs who legitimately feel that what they are doing is making the world a worse place and that a disgusting amount of money is not enough to assuage their apprehensions. They cannot even look people in the eye and tell them what they do. Maybe shame is good op-sec.
You've all managed to successfully alienate the entire creative class.
In any case, C-suite has realized that the regulatory regime depends on public consumer sentiment. The current range of products do not pacify the masses. There is a real, visceral feeling that these tools are polluting the world around us with low-quality media with malicious purposes by a growing cadre of vying interests.
- pls-dnt-deploy · 1 hours ago
  Great article, I loved it! A few parts will stay with me.
  The Idiosyncrasy dimension seems to be what I was missing the most. That relative and social aspect beyond discernment and pattern recognition.
  This is the powerful quote, because taste wasn't a top concern until mass production appeared: "Tech’s surging obsession with taste is therefore not really about aesthetics; it reflects a deep anxiety about whether economic capital can capture cultural capital at the exact moment cultural capital becomes crucial for technology’s distribution, relevance, and differentiation."
  Thanks!!!