“Ultimately, it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done— and then try to bring those things into what you are doing.” — Steve Jobs
This line from Steve Jobs has stayed with me through all my years studying behavioral science. Because taste—in its deepest sense—is quietly dying in the age of technology.
1. When “Can We Do It” Replaces “Should We Do It”
The profit-driven nature of tech companies is nothing new. There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to make money.
But when profit becomes the only measure of value, innovation starts to drift toward desire—toward emotional triggers, addiction loops, and sensory overstimulation.
As a cognitive scientist, I’ve watched with unease as behavioral science gets twisted inside the AI boom—used not to understand humans, but to hook them. Even the most renowned AI companies have begun to slide toward the realms of adult content and fantasy simulation.
It’s not technology’s fault.
It’s the absence of taste.
2. Taste: The Unquantifiable Middle Layer
Taste isn’t a matter of luxury or aesthetic preference. It’s a complex capacity to care simultaneously about long-term social good, functional elegance, and the growth of human consciousness.
Taste is what keeps both individuals and companies awake in the space between “what can be done” and “what ought to be done.”
Taste is an ethical intuition—a quiet rebellion against human laziness.
3. When Taste Disappears, Only Law Remains
I sometimes find today’s flood of AI Ethics debates both necessary and absurd. Because people or organizations with genuine taste don’t need a rulebook to tell them where the line is. They instinctively refuse to chase short-term rewards that compromise integrity— not out of fear of punishment, but out of disinterest in being cheap.
The seven deadly sins can generate cash flow, but they will never produce an upgrade in taste.
Taste, paradoxically, is what sustains human progress over the long run.
4. Art Is What Endures
I was lucky enough to grow up exposed to companies like Apple—to learn early that beauty itself can be a form of productivity. And now, I’m fortunate to work at a company where art and creation remain central. Here, my colleagues may not all identify as artists, but our shared respect for taste creates a form of resonance that transcends technical collaboration.
Perhaps that’s what happens when a company’s and its people’s values align: a quiet pursuit of beauty that becomes collective intelligence.
Good products also co-evolve with their users. They educate each other. As a contributor to this industry, I believe taste isn’t just an internal compass; it’s a form of hope—the hope that what we create can touch people, and through them, reshape the world.
✨ Toward Taste Engineering
An AI without taste can fabricate infinite illusions of desire. But only a human with taste can create meaning that lasts.
As technology accelerates and ethics blur, perhaps what we need to relearn isn’t prompt engineering, but taste engineering.
Beauty shared is progress multiplied.
May we all build for the world we wish to deserve.