Silicon Valley taste and culture

Supported by The Opinions What Silicon Valley Is Coming for Next Hint: It comes from inside of you. Silicon Valley wants to be the best tastemaker in town. Artificial intelligence is changing how we decide what to wear and read and how we interact with pop culture. The Times Opinion culture editor Nadja Spiegelman talks to the New Yorker writer Kyle Chayka and the journalist and critic Sophie Haigney about the rise of “taste slop” and what happens to culture if the internet collapses into just a few chatbots that serve us everything. Below is a transcript of an episode of “The Opinions.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on the NYTimes app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Nadja Spiegelman: There’s something I can’t stop watching. It’s called “Fruit Love Island,” and it’s just an A.I. slop version of the reality television show, and it’s really bad, obviously. But there’s something about it that’s just hooked me. And now Silicon Valley is showing a new interest in being cool and in the idea of taste. What will happen if A.I. starts creating culture that is actually good? How will any of us resist taste slop? Today I’m talking to Kyle Chayka, a New Yorker staff writer who has been covering the way Silicon Valley is shaping our culture, and Sophie Haigney, a journalist and critic who thinks a lot about whether taste is fundamentally human. Kyle, Sophie, thank you so much for joining me for this conversation. Kyle Chayka: Thank you for having us. Sophie Haigney: Yeah, excited to be here. Spiegelman: The reason we’re talking about taste in A.I. right now is in part because Silicon Valley has become really interested in this recently. The president of OpenAI, Greg Brockman, posted, “taste is a 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? Related Content Advertisement