The hard work of having "good taste."

Summary of The hard work of having "good taste."

by NPR

18m•March 27, 2026
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Overview of It's Been a Minute — "The hard work of having 'good taste.'"

This episode of NPR's It's Been a Minute (host Brittany Luce) explores what "taste" actually means, whether AI can replicate or monetize it, and what is lost when technology shortcuts the messy human labor that forms aesthetic judgment. Guests Kyle Chayka (staff writer, The New Yorker) and Kate Wagner (architecture critic, The Nation) discuss taste as a collective, embodied practice rooted in memory, community and craft, and they raise concerns about tech and AI turning taste into a product while cannibalizing the unpaid cultural labor that created modern aesthetics.

Key points and main takeaways

  • Two definitions of taste:

    • Instrumental/Tech industry usage: a functional, monetizable competence that helps build products or attract users.
    • Humanist usage: a deeper sense of what moves you — shaped by personal history, memory, community and experience.

  • AI cannot truly have "taste":

    • AI lacks selfhood, lived experience, memory, and feeling. It predicts and recombines patterns from data, but doesn't bring personal perspective or emotional resonance.
    • Chatbot recommendations lack the relational component that matters when a person we know recommends art or music.

  • AI and tech are reshaping cultural production and distribution:

    • Unlike social media, AI can both produce and recommend cultural artifacts, not just distribute them.
    • Large AI models are trained on large amounts of free, user-created cultural labor (e.g., Tumblr/Pinterest mood boards), effectively cannibalizing that labor.

  • Taste, class, and commodification:

    • Taste can be a class marker and a way to translate cultural capital into economic capital.
    • The internet made it possible for many to cultivate public taste and monetize it; AI promises to commodify and centralize that function further.

  • The loss: craftsmanship, process, and community:

    • Using AI to shortcut the process of learning or making robs people of the labor that shapes taste.
    • The antidote proposed is renewed participatory culture: making, experimenting, and being willing to be an amateur.

Topics discussed

  • Definitions of taste (personal vs. instrumental)
  • The role of friends, critics, communities, and memories in forming taste
  • Silicon Valley’s emphasis on "taste" as a competitive edge and product feature
  • AI’s limitations: no feelings, no memories, no sense of self
  • How AI appropriates free cultural labor (mood boards, online archives)
  • Cultural anxieties AI promises to soothe: fear of being wrong about taste, loneliness, desire for quick answers
  • The emotional, social value of human recommendations vs. algorithmic recs
  • The call to revive DIY culture: practice, amateurism, craft as remedies

Notable quotes and insights

  • "Taste is in some way a collective practice." — emphasizes community involvement in developing taste.
  • "You can't really have taste without other people and without a community of people experiencing things with you." — on why AI can't replace human taste.
  • "AI has no sense of self. It has no sense of beauty. It literally has no feeling." — about AI’s fundamental limits regarding aesthetics.
  • "You're really robbing yourself of the joy of the labor of developing taste." — on the value of doing the work to form taste.
  • "We should be writing crappy poems...playing the violin badly." — a plea to reclaim amateurism and the process of making.

Recommendations / Action items (practical takeaways)

  • Treat AI as a tool, not a substitute for lived experience — use it to assist, not replace the process of discovering or making art.
  • Re-engage in participatory culture: take a class, make art, learn an instrument — the effort cultivates taste and empathy.
  • Seek human recommendations and conversations about culture rather than relying solely on algorithmic curation.
  • Be skeptical of platforms or products that claim to "give you taste" — ask whose labor and perspectives power that recommendation.
  • Value the process over instant polish: allow yourself to be an amateur to better appreciate expert work.

Context & credits

  • Host: Brittany Luce (It's Been a Minute, NPR)
  • Guests: Kyle Chayka (staff writer, The New Yorker) and Kate Wagner (architecture critic, The Nation)
  • Production credits (mentioned in episode): Produced by Corey Antonio-Rose; edited by Nina Potthuk; supervising producer Barton Girdwood; VP Programming Yolanda Sanguini.
  • Central concern: The cultural and ethical implications of letting AI systems define, reproduce, and monetize "taste" at the expense of human labor, memory and community.