Good Morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

It’s that time of the year again! There’s a slight nip in the air here in Bengaluru, Christmas lights are draped over windows and storefronts, and Mariah Carey’s 1994 Christmas album has officially been thawed for the season. The holidays are upon us! 

And right on schedule, nearly every brand worth its salt is rolling out a campaign soaked in nostalgia. Think happy families in matching sweaters, steaming mugs of cocoa, and geography-defying snowflakes—the whole festive works. 

For decades, Coca-Cola’s annual Christmas commercials have been the gold standard for this formula. (Fun fact: the beverage giant is widely credited with shaping our modern image of Santa Claus as the jolly, red-suited man with rosy cheeks and a rotund belly.) But something shifted last year.

For the first time, Coca-Cola leaned into artificial intelligence to produce its holiday ads. The reaction? People were not impressed. The ad was panned as tacky, soulless, and just plain weird. This year, they tried again and the reaction wasn’t much better. As one Youtube commenter pointed out: “The unintended irony of using ‘Real Magic’ as the tagline is hilarious.” 

So what went wrong? Technically, AI did its job. The visuals were polished, the music was fine, and it ticked all the Christmas boxes. And yet, the whole thing felt profoundly off.

That gap—between something that looks correct and something that genuinely feels good—is what this week’s episode of 90,000 Hours  is all about. 

Let me explain. The Coke commercials are just the tip of a steadily growing mountain of AI-generated content. Some of it is decent, but most of it lands as bland or just bad. AI tools are now deeply embedded in how we work. They’ve made things faster, yes, but they’ve also made much of what we create feel predictable and formulaic. You see it everywhere: in generic presentations, templated Linkedin posts, cookie-cutter websites, and yes, in ad films.

This is precisely why the ability to discern real quality—to know what’s truly good—is becoming one of the most critical skills in the workplace today. In a word? Taste. And it’s not a luxury reserve for designers or critics; it’s an essential tool for everyone.

To understand what it means now and why it matters more than ever, I spoke to three people who rely on it every single day:

• Professor Bernd Schmitt, who teaches marketing at Columbia Business School
• Sunit Singh, a product designer and co-founder of consulting firm Design Capital
• Prateek Jogani, former CTO of Indonesian insurtech platform Qoala, who stepped down earlier this month and is now building an AI startup

To provide some context, Sunit is the creative mind behind the design language at companies like Cleartrip and Ola—brands you’ve likely used more than once. Early in our conversation, he admitted that he inherently disliked the word “taste” because of its elitist baggage, as if it were reserved for people who summer in Europe and casually have Amrita Sher-Gil paintings in their living rooms. 

He prefers to think of it as judgement or a worldview. 

“With AI, the barrier to entry in creative fields has collapsed. Tools are leading, and people are simply following, which is why we are seeing this ocean of sameness, work that looks polished but lacks soul,” he told me. 

Users are catching on, too. They can smell AI-generated content from a mile away, and they are starting to tune it out.

That brings up an interesting question: this isn’t the first time things have started to look the same. We have definitely seen it before, when consumer platforms or brands began converging on the same visual style. But this time, the backlash feels far more severe. 

Perhaps it’s because now it’s not just about seeing the same look—it reflects a deeper sameness in thinking. The work feels predictable, stripped of individuality, creativity, and personality. 

Ultimately everything comes down to judgement: the ability to sense what will resonate with people—an instinct honed over time through deep exposure and reflection. 

If you are reading this and thinking, hasn’t that always mattered? You are right. But now, we are witnessing what Sunit described as a flattening of that very taste or judgement. 

Professor Schmitt, meanwhile, offered a rather positive spin. He sees this as a new phase of art in many ways. 

Now, that same shift is happening in advertising and marketing. The question is: will people get used to this new aesthetic, or will they continue to see it as inferior? Professor Schmitt pointed us to a short film by the French advertising giant Publicis, produced for its 100th anniversary. It was entirely AI-generated, tracing the company’s journey from 1926 to today. It got rave reviews. There were also campaigns by brands like Valentino and Moncler, AI-led efforts that sparked significant buzz. And honestly? They didn’t suck.

The key difference was clear: these ads were made with intention. A strong concept and distinct point of view were evident throughout, guided by human judgement. That is taste in action.

If AI can write meticulous code, what do you bring to the table? Decoding that is precisely what will keep software engineers relevant for years to come. 

In the latest episode of 90,000 Hours, we dig into this shift and ask experts how to actually develop that critical eye. Check it out, and let me know what you think. 

Until next time,
Rahel 

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