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I asked Claude, who is the most beautiful woman, and it told me that it didn\u2019t experience faces, but then it was like Tilda Swinton and Lupita Nyong\u2019o, and I was like, my Claude knows I\u2019m gay. There\u2019s something I just can\u2019t stop watching. \u201cWelcome to Fruit Love Island, where eight single fruits are about to flirt, fight and trust.\u201d Fruit Love Island. \u201cI\u2019m Limerya. I\u2019m a lime from Miami.\u201d It\u2019s just an A.I. slop version of the reality television show. And it\u2019s really bad. \u201cObviously you\u2019re crazy and you like it.\u201d But there\u2019s something about it that\u2019s just hooked me. And now Silicon Valley is showing a new interest in being cool and in the idea of taste. What\u2019s going to happen if A.I. can create actually good culture? How will any of us resist taste slop? Today I\u2019m talking to Kyle Chayka, a New Yorker writer who covers how Silicon Valley is shaping our culture. And Sophie Haigney, a writer and critic who thinks a lot about whether taste is fundamentally human. Kyle, Sophie, thank you so much for joining me for this conversation. Yeah, thank you for having us. Yeah, excited to be here. The reason why we\u2019re talking about taste and A.I. right now is in part because Silicon Valley has become really interested in this. Recently, the president of OpenAI, Greg Brockman, tweeted, taste is the new core skill. And in planning for this, I have read endless tech blogs about taste, which is odd to me because I think of Silicon Valley as fundamentally anti taste. And Kyle, you wrote about this recently. What is going on there. Why does Silicon Valley care about taste. Oh my God. I feel like it\u2019s because they realize they don\u2019t have it. Kind of like us. I started noticing it in the last year or two, I would say as generative A.I. has become more and more popular and seen more uptake with normal people. And I think the tech vanguard are kind of like A.I. isn\u2019t just slop. Like, we\u2019ll create tasteful things with A.I. We need to be enlightened about what we choose to make, and we need to exercise our personal judgment in order to use this new crazy tool. And so I think they\u2019ve realized that taste is something that they need and desperately are trying to claim, but are maybe not achieving that quite yet. Yes yeah, there\u2019s definitely an element cope to their taste obsession. I also yeah I mean I think they\u2019re like having a hard time like the products that they\u2019re putting out Claude and ChatGPT, they\u2019re having a hard time making the case that these are cool because they\u2019re kind of not. I mean, they\u2019re not like when the iPhone came out, it was cool. Steve Jobs was like, cool. I remember the old Apple iPod ads, they were selling something that had a very clear design aesthetic. It was like a physical object. I think a lot of people are just like looking at A.I. and they\u2019re like, this is cringe Yeah, this is just not cool. Like, Sam Altman is not a cool guy in the way that Steve Jobs could be cool. At least he had something going on. He had a vibe. They\u2019re very vibe less. And so I think yeah, the vibe of I was like that. People have to cling to this life raft of the idea of taste Yeah, I think that\u2019s true. And taste. I mean, we could talk for a long time just trying to define taste. But you both thought about this a lot. You wrote a whole chapter about it in your book filter world. You\u2019re working on a book about collecting where you\u2019ve written a chapter about taste. What is your working definition of taste for this conversation to go. I mean, I think basically it\u2019s about how you respond to things that are in your environment. If you see a lamp, do you love it. Does it repulse you. Do you want it. Does it remind you of something you\u2019re making all of these instantaneous judgments about things based on what feels like instinct and pure preference to you, but is actually something that\u2019s very much shaped by your background, by things you\u2019ve seen in magazines, or more likely, now on Instagram. But I think the way we experience it is almost just like magic we just connect with something or we don\u2019t Yeah, it\u2019s like ephemeral and magical and instantaneous and it happens inside of you. I think in my book and other research, the idea of taste traces back to 18th century philosophers. O.K, so there\u2019s this great Montesquieu quote that I\u2019ve written down on my phone because I like it so much. Natural taste is not a theoretical knowledge. It\u2019s a quick and exquisite application of rules which we do not even know. And I think that\u2019s what Sophie was talking about a little bit like you can\u2019t guess it in advance. You can\u2019t predict your reaction to something. It\u2019s just this response within yourself. But it\u2019s interesting because as I\u2019m listening to you talk, that specific definition, a quick and responsive response to a series of rules that we cannot know. Isn\u2019t that also exactly what LLMs are to some degree. And if taste is formed by consuming an enormous amount of information. Could an LLM theoretically do that better than a human could. The ingesting data is a really interesting part of it. Like LLMs do have access to the whole of human knowledge in some ways, as a French philosopher maybe thought they did in 1750s. But to me, taste is not just like that knowledge or the facticity of it like to know something. It\u2019s to actually appreciate it and to feel it, to feel it, which is what an I can\u2019t do. So it could suggest something to you. It could produce text that makes you feel something, but the feeling is never in the LLM. And Sophie was talking about vibes before. There\u2019s academic work now on how vibes are like these implied connections between huge sets of data and that LLMs, are made up of vibes and academic work on vibes Yeah, there, there definitely is. I think there\u2019s a new book coming out pretty soon. I want to become a professor of vibe studies, so maybe this is also the I taste connection because it\u2019s like it is abstract and we don\u2019t totally understand it yet, but to me, it\u2019s still a computer. And a computer fundamentally can\u2019t have an embodied reaction to a piece of art. I don\u2019t think so. I mean, I basically agree, I think there\u2019s so much of Ken and LLM. Does an LLM really have a concept of beauty. Like, does an LLM really have a concept of hating something. But they can parrot it. And a lot of people do parroting in taste to there\u2019s a lot of taste that is fundamentally a lot of the way we express taste is like consumption. We buy clothes that we think look cool, we read books maybe that we think will make us seem cool and LLMs are not bad at that. Like before this I asked ChatGPT. I was like, what are five books I could read that would make me seem like I have good taste. It was like a Rachel Cusk book. A Maggie Nelson book, \u201cNever Let Me Go.\u201d It was very it felt slightly dated. But I was like, O.K, if you went to a party in Brooklyn and you talked about those books, you\u2019re not off base, but there is that kind of missing fundamental experience. But then I feel like once the machine can reproduce that taste or that style, then we\u2019ve all moved on. It does feel really a little bit dated. Yeah once it\u2019s so predictable is the reason Silicon Valley is so interested in taste right now, in part because it\u2019s perhaps like the final frontier of what makes us human like one of the things that is essentially human. It\u2019s like love and taste and beauty. And that\u2019s what A.I. is kind of trying to disrupt. Like it\u2019s technology that targets exactly our human identity and our sense of self and our sense of what people can do and can\u2019t do. And so I think they are chasing technology that replicates taste in a way, and they want to disrupt it in the same way that I don\u2019t Facebook disrupted communication and friendship. Now A.I. is disrupting your own taste in culture, even more so than algorithmic feeds have. Can you say more about that. How is A.I. disrupting our taste and culture even more than algorithmic feeds. To me, the era of generative A.I. is kind of a successor and an intensifier of the last era of digital technology, which was algorithmic recommendations. So algorithmic recommendations kind of pushed bodies of content and culture at you and tried to guess what you wanted. And now the promise or the hope in Silicon Valley for A.I. is that it just produces what you want. Barely have to speak it or think it. And I will deliver to you the Fruit Love Island of your dreams. \u201cHey, boys. Whoa look at that. Awesome let\u2019s go.\u201d Or like, what if Baby Yoda was in James Bond. And I would like to. The taste problem that is their idea of goodness. I think that wish fulfillment, sense of culture and art. And there\u2019s also I mean, you can fine tune more and more about what you want. I was looking at this A.I. matchmaking dating app that was like you could the number of variables you could filter someone by included like percentage body fat. And they were claiming that they could look at the picture of someone\u2019s face and tell what they were going to be. And I didn\u2019t create weird bad body standards, nor did it create the problems of dating apps. But I think it will intensify this specification of what you want and then getting that wish back that yeah, I like that idea of wish fulfillment culture. I mean, I hate the idea of it, but I think that seems to speak to this era where you can increasingly tweak and tweak and tweak and get closer to what you want, and it will just be delivered to you that is dystopic to me. And taste, taste is, comes from outside of you. I think as we were talking about the definition before, it surprises you like it\u2019s not what you guessed it was. It\u2019s something that comes up and brings you somewhere New Yeah I mean, I think that for me, I asked my dad when I was like 7, what is art. And he was about to go into the dentist\u2019s office and get laughing gas and was like, hold that thought. I\u2019ll think about this better when I\u2019ve had laughing gas and then he came out and was art is giving shape to your thoughts and emotions. And that\u2019s obviously the artist\u2019s perspective of what is art. But I think it\u2019s what we want when we engage with it. We want to feel like, oh, this is someone else who has experienced being alive, who knows that they can die, who has fallen in love, who has a body that can be harmed. And, this is what it is like to experience the world through their mind. And that even if I can perfectly simulate that experience, there\u2019s a feeling of coldness that comes from knowing that you\u2019re not connecting to another living being. But as I\u2019ve been thinking about this episode and talking to you guys about it, I do keep going to. But does it really matter. Like is our fear about a culture in which a lot of things can be. I think right now I can\u2019t quite do this, but I would imagine that maybe five years from now, I could write a perfectly passable Rachel Cusk novel. Is that an insult to Rachel? I was only using her as a marker of good taste. Well, I mean, the comparison that people use and that I\u2019ve deployed myself probably several times, is that generative A.I. is similar to when painting encountered photography. Like photography, the invention of photography, it was able to exactly reproduce reality. It was able to create the most realistic image possible. And so painting responded to that by getting crazier, by not depicting reality, by moving into emotional abstract painting and gesture and things that were not about depicting what\u2019s in front of you. So I feel like I can is kind of like the photography in this situation where it can create simulacra of art, it can create things that are like art or have artistic qualities, and that the profusion of that kind of slop basically high on slop, which the trend forecaster Emily Segal recently called \u201ctaste slop.\u201d Like high end slop that might push artists and writers and creators to go farther. Taste slop is so interesting to me as a word because part of what I was thinking about when I was thinking about this is I slop, we call it that, to intentionally signify that this is of bad taste, derogatory. So taste slop creates such an interesting mishmash of where this might all be going. But I think my question is still both had this instinctive reaction that having a cultural production machine give you exactly what you want would be bad. But why. I mean, in some ways we do already live in a world where that is true. I feel like we live. You\u2019re constantly getting served something based on what you listened to before, but accelerating that. I mean, I just think so much of like, what makes consuming culture worthwhile is like to be surprised, to be challenged, to experience emotions you didn\u2019t expect to feel. Which doesn\u2019t mean there\u2019s no room for the town starring Ben Affleck. I also culture that I don\u2019t necessarily think is good, but provides me pleasure. But I don\u2019t want a world where that entirely crowds out this whole other field of things that really like that. I can\u2019t predict that might like, move me in ways I don\u2019t even want to be moved. I feel like that\u2019s a really bad future, and I feel like I\u2019m like, well, what is even the point of being human. Like, what are the points. What are the point of these tools. How are they going to what are they going to do for me if they\u2019re kind of violating that fundamental human experience what there was this flaw in some A.I. models that they were too obsequious, they would give you too much of what you wanted, and they would praise you too much and compliment you too much. And people got I psychosis from this obsequiousness. But I feel like that I is tendency to not challenge you and to not push you and to be so agreeable limits its ability to deliver culture. That\u2019s challenging also. But that was actually going to be my next question. Are all of these anxieties that we feel about how A.I. will shape our culture is somewhere at the root of that anxiety, the fear that we are all basic, the fear that we are all kind of mid and basic if left to our own devices, I guess I feel like more of the anxieties come out of a place of what is I mean, one of the reasons I think people are obsessed with taste is because they just think A.I. is going to take everything from them, or it\u2019s going to revolutionize everything. And so people are clinging to these life rafts, and taste is one of them. Like, it\u2019s scary. It\u2019s scary out there with A.I. and we\u2019re being told a lot of stuff with varying degrees of confidence that we don\u2019t know if it\u2019s true. Like, is A.I. going to take all our jobs or not really matter that much. I think the uncertainty around it is very confusing. We just don\u2019t know what will happen. It\u2019s like people are adopting the tools, A.I. is being used in filmmaking and in music and in everything, and we can\u2019t quite recognize it yet. Or maybe we are in the point where we can recognize it a little and soon we won\u2019t be able to at all. And so there\u2019s this fear that I don\u2019t the humanity is being cut through or adulterated with this new machinic stuff. And is that an old fear that we\u2019ve always had about technology like is to some degree. Should we be thinking about A.I. as it could be applied to culture as not so different from Photoshop or C.G.I.? Yeah was it the Plato thing that written language is bad and it will cause people to not remember anything. And that turned out O.K and photography turned out O.K. And I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll adapt to A.I., but I don\u2019t know. I just keep coming back to. Like social media is now widely recognized as not very good for a lot of civilization Yeah and so, I hope we don\u2019t rush uncritically into this next mass adoption of technology, which is generative A.I. Yeah though I\u2019m sure we will. Sadly I mean, I also want to talk about how A.I. is going to change the economic models for working artists. Can you tell me about that? Yeah I think A.I. is already changing how artists survive because the way that these A.I. models work and the reason that they exist is because they have hoovered up all of human culture that all artists ever made already. And we put into digital form. And so it could be mashed into a machine and turned into a trained model the models that exist now do not exist without all of the human art and writing and culture that came before them. And I think in automating all of that stuff, it is kind of made it even more difficult for artists to survive. And the artists are not profiting from the way that their work was digested into these machines illustrators and graphic designers are seeing their livelihoods vanish. So I feel like A.I. itself is making that situation worse, where there are fewer artists and creators who can make a living, and they have a harder time reaching the people who would sustain their careers. And at the same time, A.I. companies, which are now valued in the trillions of dollars, probably are not paying any royalties or fees. They\u2019re not supporting artists, they\u2019re not generating new culture of their own or creating a sustainable ecosystem. I think it\u2019s generative. AI is kind of impoverishing the cultural production model, which it\u2019s in turn replacing. And so that makes it harder for us to have new culture and to even have a more organic, grassroots culture that we can enjoy. Yeah and then I mean, I was reading an article in Wired, the headline of which was, \u201cI Work in Hollywood. Everyone Who Used to Make TV Is Now Secretly Training A.I.\u201d And it was about how the A.I. training company Mercor has about 30,000 freelancers. Basically just people training their own replacements. And TV is a particularly dangerous one because people have rarely known who was in the writers\u2019 room. Like, we don\u2019t have the same attachment to the human behind it. And if A.I. starts making prestige TV, my worry is also like, what is the messaging behind it. Like, what would we be getting out of an A.I. created version of \u201cThe Wire.\u201d Like, what kind of values is it going to be giving us. Probably whatever it\u2019s been trained and waited to do by the companies that make the models. Like, I don\u2019t there have been some studies that large A.I. models trend toward liberalism or they like socialism a little bit more than you might expect because they see it as a logical, I don\u2019t sustainable civilization or something. But I think we should not trust that the models that we\u2019re using and that are being adopted are in any way neutral or creative or not following kind of secret weights, as they call them, or variables that are in the systems planted there by the founders of the companies. There\u2019s just too much incentive for the companies to mess with them up for them not to interfere, basically. Yeah that\u2019s one of my anxieties about A.I. and culture is like, are we actually just all basic and is that the fear. But the other one is like so much of what we understand about the world, when we read novels, when we read Tolstoy, we\u2019re understanding so much about what a certain set of values are about the world a certain sense of what it means to be alive and how and very politically what it means to be alive and how. And I worry that if we start consuming things that are made by A.I., these Silicon Valley companies are so openly in bed with the government. A.I. companies and executives are major political donors. In the 2026 election campaign cycle, they\u2019ve pledged $150 million to influence A.I. legislation. Is there anything stopping companies like Anthropic or OpenAI from introducing politically motivated messaging into the culture that we consume. I don\u2019t think so. I mean, social media had a lot of these same problems. There\u2019s been very little regulation of it. And I think we can see a model or an idea of what might happen with Elon Musk buying Twitter and turning it into X and absolutely perverting the variables of the feed and absolutely prioritizing content that say, praises Elon Musk like we\u2019ve experienced this Yeah, the political transition of an algorithmic feed. I feel like x is a really good example, just of how one individual\u2019s political like political viewpoints can just be injected in into mass consumption. And I find it such a good example because so many of my friends and colleagues who know this, who know that X is now algorithmically weighted towards Elon Musk\u2019s specific politics, still somewhere in their brain look at it and think, oh, that\u2019s what people are saying. I\u2019m guilty. I\u2019m guilty. So it\u2019s hard to escape that, especially because before it was maybe a little bit better. And I think the same corruption can and will happen with the A.I. models where I mean, right now we\u2019re in this phase of like, Anthropic is supposed to be the good guys who are neutral and don\u2019t want to make killing robots for the government, whereas OpenAI is like, we\u2019re going to follow the government and do whatever and chase profit as much as we can, but neither of them are good. Neither are following a sense of human good that I believe in. I wonder if we can cast ourselves, five years in the future to where we\u2019ll be with all of this, because we\u2019ve formed a parasocial relationship with these bots, and we asked them for recommendations the way we would ask a friend or a bookseller or a critic for recommendations. And I wonder, where does that leave us five, 10 years from now. I think if the user actions right now are any indication, people will be using chatbots a lot and using them as a window to everything they\u2019re doing and consuming. So right now we open our phones and go to lots of apps and see lots of things, but I think in the future it\u2019ll just be your A.I. model ChatGPT or Anthropic. And then that\u2019s the window through which you\u2019ll see other stuff, whether it\u2019s like a YouTube channel or a book recommendation or your faux romantic relationship with a robot. I would also recommend having the New York Times app on your phone. Yes, exactly. But yeah, I think the A.I. model will be your guide to everything else and thus influences everything you do. And in that world where everything that you experience now is multiple different apps on your phone or as a search engine is instead a singular A.I. model who is giving you information. What impact does that have on how we develop our sense of taste and how we experience culture. To me, it feels more homogeneous. I mean, I think a lot of users are pretty passive, and they identify with the first layer of what they interact with. So it\u2019ll be like you don\u2019t consume music through Spotify, you consume it through ChatGPT like you see an artist\u2019s stuff, their music, their paintings, whatever, through the chatbot. And so you associate that culture with the chatbot itself. And I don\u2019t it feels yucky to me. And it\u2019s like you\u2019re saying, it feels like it\u2019s your friend. That\u2019s kind of one of the weirder parts of it. Like, it feels like it\u2019s your buddy that has everything in it at the same time, and it remembers you like, this is one of the most shocking experiential parts of it to me. Like they build up memories of what you\u2019ve told it and your preferences and the things that you rely on. As part of researching this, I asked Claude, who is the most beautiful woman, and it told me that it didn\u2019t experience faces, but then it was like Tilda Swinton and Lupita Nyong\u2019o, and I was like, my Claude knows I\u2019m gay. I wonder what happens. I wonder what happens if I ask generic Claude. So I created a new Claude account, and I prompted it in exactly the same way. I used exactly the same language, and it said Audrey Hepburn. That\u2019s so interesting. Fascinating it\u2019s modulating based on your own tastes what the ideal is. And I think we\u2019re just so unaware of those biases in addition to the biases in the model. But that\u2019s a hyper specific way that it\u2019s filtering like culture and everything. Back to you via what you\u2019ve told it before and what impact do you think it will have in a world where instead of a for you page on Instagram, everything is going through Claude or ChatGPT five years from now. I think, again, it\u2019s just that optimization towards what you already like and the feeling that it\u2019s being fed back to you by this kind of friendly entity who knows you based on what you\u2019ve told them already. And then do we also see a convergence of these two things of it being your everything you consume is mediated through the app on your phone. That is your A.I. app. But then are you also through that app consuming video that\u2019s created by A.I. Like, is there any outside to this world that is like the snake eating its own tail, I guess. I think in the A.I. company\u2019s aspirations there is no outside. Like they would love to create this purely A.I. bubble where it tells you what to consume and produces what you consume at the same time. And that would be the most profitable, efficient ecosystem for an OpenAI or an Anthropic to create. But I think the problem with that is that there is then no mechanism for humans making anything like they are betting everything on the AI being good enough that it\u2019s smarter than a human I can do and create better things than a human. So we\u2019re going to find out, I guess. But if there\u2019s no incentive for humans to make stuff, if there\u2019s no economic function for it, I really worry that the cultural ecosystem and the information ecosystem will just get degraded very quickly. But I do think culture always lives, there\u2019s always a New thing happening, and there\u2019s some artists working in their basement doing some crazy thing. And I know I do have hope that a human artist always has that urge to make something new, and I believe that too, even outside of the I mean, the economic model, economic models for culture are terrible, but people still make it and have always made music and art. I believe that will persist. It\u2019s a very, very deep human urge, but we\u2019re making it a lot harder Yeah for no good reason as I see it. Can you be prescriptive. What can someone listening, who feels the anxieties about all of the things that we\u2019ve talked about, about the flattening of culture, about A.I. taking over, about our own tastes becoming more and more simply the easiest, most basic versions of ourselves reflected back at us. What specifically can you do on an individual level to keep making an argument within yourself and within the world for things that surprise and risk and challenge you. I love the question. I mean, it\u2019s like a discipline that we all have to practice every day to separate our taste and our identity from the feed or the A.I. model or just from our screens. And to be like, no, that\u2019s not me like that. My phone is not my entire identity. And I find that I mean, there\u2019s different ways to go off the rails for yourself. I think can explore the internet beyond what is fed to you directly by your feed. You can delve into a rabbit hole on Spotify or on YouTube, you can explore within these ecosystems. And I think you can just go offline. Like you can go to MoMA and look at a weird painting, or you can go to any art museum and not just go to the most famous piece of work or the most famous object, but just kind of wander around and experience something that you don\u2019t understand yet and just sit there and feel if you are gravitating towards something or not. I don\u2019t know. It feels like a meditative practice to me, a little bit to just exist and see what moves you. And that\u2019s something that we don\u2019t get the chance to do on our phones, because they\u2019re just bombarding us with New stuff all the time. And I feel like in addition to yeah, kind of being more open to randomness, there\u2019s also the depth factor, I think it\u2019s so rewarding to go so deep on one specific thing or read, all the novels by Elizabeth Bowen, who is like a mid-century writer who I don\u2019t think has had the critical Renaissance that many of her peers have, like just read them all and see what happens. And will be rewarded for deep attention and focusing hard on one specific thing or one specific area, be more like a collector, be more open to the idea that yeah, the depth and narrowness will reward you rather than broad consumption of everything, always being aware of what\u2019s in The New York Times Book Review, just like, yeah, follow your own kind of eccentric path, I think. And that\u2019s taste and that\u2019s taste, taste, taste. You don\u2019t have to chase everything. You can chase. What fascinates you. Sophie, Kyle, thank you so much for talking about this with me. It was so nice to just get to air all of my biggest anxieties about A.I. in the culture at you, and hear what you feel inspired and hopeful. I also feel inspired and hopeful. Yeah, we left it on a good note.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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