The Only Job Left: New Value of Human Taste

When almost anyone can produce competent work, what makes anything worth choosing?Artificial intelligence can make a polished first version of almost anything. In The Only Job Left, David Kennedy makes a forecast: as competent output becomes abundant, people will increasingly appreciate the particular human choices that give work its character and purpose.Taste, in this argument, is not a preference for expensive things or a badge of cultural superiority. Nor does making something by hand guarantee that it is good. Taste is visible in what belongs together, what serves the occasion and what someone has the nerve to leave out.Drawing on research into creativity and the effects of origin labels, Kennedy examines the difference between competence and distinction. He takes seriously the possibility that audiences may prefer machine-made work, and asks what that means for a forecast centred on human contribution.This is a concise argument about what we may come to value when execution becomes easier. It is not a promise that machines can never judge well, or that appreciation will automatically become better pay.