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I think the "taste" described here actually can be formulated as a measurable quantity, just one that can't be accurately measured in practice. According to Jam

I think the "taste" described here actually can be formulated as a measurable quantity, just one that can't be accurately measured in practice. According to James Shore's 2006 essay "Quality With a Name" [0], "good design" amounts to nothing more or less than minimising the expected engineering time needed to create a good enough product over the space of changes that are likely to be needed during its lifetime (I'm paraphrasing slightly). Realising this was a revelation to me. I would argue that OP's "taste" is Shore's "good design". This conclusion may be unwelcome here, since it implies that AI can acquire "taste". [0]: https://www.jamesshore.com/Articles/Quality-With-a-Name.html https://www.jamesshore.com/Articles/Quality-With-a-Name.html

notashelf 2mo ago
I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to conclude AI can acquire what I have described, and would continue to defend as taste. The real question, then, could be whether its acquired taste renders you obsolete? So what if you can be replaced, what then? A question that popped into my mind is whether taste, as immeasurable as a metric as it is, would be what keeps you relevant just enough to matter.
- akoboldfrying 2mo ago
  Unpleasant as it would be, I think it may well render us obsolete in the main. There will probably always be a handful of paid human programmers around, just as there will probably always be a handful of people paid to make buggy whips, but the history of capitalism shows that most buyers don't care enough about how their goods and services get made to pay the premium that would keep "handmade" items economically viable for sellers. So I don't yet see a compelling reason why ~all of us programmers (and all other white collar workers in their turn) won't be replaced by LLMs. The only difference I see between what happened to master craftsmen during the Industrial Revolution and what is happening to programmers today is that I belong to the latter group, so for the first time, the coming employment crisis feels personal.

notashelf 2mo ago

I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to conclude AI can acquire what I have described, and would continue to defend as taste. The real question, then, could be whether its acquired taste renders you obsolete? So what if you can be replaced, what then? A question that popped into my mind is whether taste, as immeasurable as a metric as it is, would be what keeps you relevant just enough to matter.

akoboldfrying 2mo ago
Unpleasant as it would be, I think it may well render us obsolete in the main. There will probably always be a handful of paid human programmers around, just as there will probably always be a handful of people paid to make buggy whips, but the history of capitalism shows that most buyers don't care enough about how their goods and services get made to pay the premium that would keep "handmade" items economically viable for sellers. So I don't yet see a compelling reason why ~all of us programmers (and all other white collar workers in their turn) won't be replaced by LLMs. The only difference I see between what happened to master craftsmen during the Industrial Revolution and what is happening to programmers today is that I belong to the latter group, so for the first time, the coming employment crisis feels personal.