> OPINION: LOADING…

Everyone is chasing the wrong advantage.

Better prompts. Faster models. The latest agent framework someone shipped on GitHub six hours ago. As if the win belongs to whoever stays current with the most tools.

It doesn’t.

Here is what nobody is saying loud enough: AI has made technical skill the cheapest thing on earth. What cost years of practice now costs a sentence. What required a team now requires a tab open. The barrier to making things has collapsed. And when the barrier collapses, the thing that used to separate winners from everyone else stops separating anything.

So what replaces it?

Taste.

Not taste in the soft, subjective, “I like blue” sense. Taste as a competitive weapon. Taste as the ability to look at ten options and know — instantly, instinctively — which one is right. Not which one is good. Which one is the one.

That is not a creative skill. That is the skill.

The production problem is solved

For most of internet history, the hard part was making the thing. Writing the copy. Designing the page. Coding the backend. Building anything required either a skillset or a budget, and usually both.

That era is over.

Now anyone can produce. Anyone can generate. Anyone can ship. The question is not “can you make it” — the question is “do you know what’s worth making.”

And most people don’t.

That sounds harsh. But look around. Look at the brands that feel hollow. The content that feels generated. The products that technically work but emotionally do nothing. The thing they all share is not a lack of capability. It’s a lack of taste. Someone built it who could build — but couldn’t judge.

AI multiplies output. It does not multiply judgment. If you had bad taste before, you now have bad taste at scale.

That’s terrifying for them. That’s the opportunity for you.

Taste is not a gift

Here’s where people get it wrong. They think taste is something you’re born with. An innate sensibility. A genetic lottery ticket.

It’s not.

Taste is a muscle. You build it by looking at more things than anyone else. By studying what worked and, more importantly, what almost worked but didn’t. By developing a sensitivity to the gap between “done” and “right.” By caring enough to notice when something is off by two pixels, one word, half a shade.

I’ve spent years doing this. Not formally. Not in a classroom. Just paying attention. Screenshotting things that stopped me. Saving references. Asking why something felt the way it felt. That practice, obsessive, informal, ongoing, is the most valuable professional asset I have.

And here’s the thing: AI can’t do it.

AI can mimic patterns. It can remix references. It can produce output that passes a quick scan. But it cannot feel whether something lands. It cannot develop an instinct for what resonates. It cannot build taste. Not now, not yet.

Only you can.

The new leverage

In the old world, leverage came from access. Access to capital. Access to talent. Access to distribution.

In the new world, leverage comes from taste.

Because taste is what makes people stop scrolling. Taste is what makes a brand feel authentic instead of synthetic. Taste is what turns a generic product into something people want to be associated with. Taste is the thing that cannot be automated, cannot be copied, and cannot be faked for long.

Everyone with a ChatGPT tab can produce. Very few people can curate. Even fewer can create with intention, knowing not just how to make something, but why this version and not that one.

That is the moat.

And the beautiful part? It’s available to anyone willing to do the work. There is no gatekeeper for taste. No degree required. No permission needed. Just years of paying attention, caring deeply, and refusing to ship things that feel wrong.

Build your taste like your career depends on it. Because increasingly, it does.

The tools are free. The models are everywhere. The production problem is solved.

All that’s left is knowing what’s good.