AI is coming for our design jobs, but it can’t touch taste
Why taste, not technical skill, is the designer’s future edge.
Ok, that’s a tad dramatic. Personally, I find myself somewhere between AI bullishness and full-blown doomerism — adopting a cautious stance of, “Let’s see how this all shakes out.”
That said, it’s jarring to hear someone like Dario Amodei, CEO of AI firm Anthropic, warn that AI could eliminate up to 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within the next five years.
Simultaneously, tools like Figma Make and Google Stitch are just a few examples of the growing wave of AI design tools rapidly accelerating the design process.
It’s worth noting that AI will not automatically replace jobs— corporations must choose to use AI to replace jobs, and a lack of public policy and regulation will make this possible. Still, it’s unsettling.
As someone who remembers the stress of breaking into product design as a new grad, I empathize with students and career switchers navigating this turbulence. And I’m not naive enough to believe senior roles are immune either. Nor have I missed the oft-repeated warning: “Your job won’t be replaced by AI, it’ll be replaced by a human using AI.”
Whether Amodei’s prediction proves true remains to be seen. But I believe designers will still matter once the dust settles because there is one important skill we have that AI cannot replicate — taste.
AI has no point of view
AI is inherently derivative. As intelligent and creative as it may seem, it relies heavily on remixing the training data it’s been fed.
https://medium.com/media/1e536f6f125c7d31310e6782b8df0da1/href
You might remember when Figma landed in hot water last year after its AI-generated designs started closely mimicking Apple’s UI. Sure, a year is a lifetime in relation to the light-speed development of AI, but a quick search suggests that problem hasn’t entirely gone away. The point isn’t to bash Figma’s AI, but rather to illustrate how deeply these tools rely on what they’ve already seen within existing UI.
Now, you could argue that pulling inspiration from Dribbble or Mobbin is basically the same thing. But I disagree. A designer worth their salt doesn’t blindly copy the most repeated UI pattern they see. They gather references, explore variations, and make intentional decisions based on rationale. They even gather inspiration from places beyond existing app designs.
Even Amodei admits he doesn’t know why Anthropic’s AI makes certain choices. Contrast that with any design critique, where articulating your reasoning is essential:
“Why did you choose a dropdown over a multi-select here?”
“Is this the right way to solve this user problem?”
Great design often emerges from a clear design philosophy. Take Linear, for example, with its emphasis on “opinionated software.” That kind of philosophy is born from deep understanding of users, their problems, and a point of view on how to solve them.
AI might automate technical execution. But without a point of view, how can it create truly great design?
Human discernment and taste
In a not-so-distant future (honestly, even now) where AI can generate unlimited options of wireframes and high-fidelity mocks at the click of a button, how will you choose which one to actually refine and use?
This is where discernment and taste, rather than technical skill, become the differentiator.
Taste is built over time — by experiencing great art, design, film, literature, and by learning from what works and what doesn’t. It’s also built from your own lived experiences and the act of reflecting on them. It’s something you can, and should, start developing as a student or career switcher as soon as possible. While you might not yet rival the industry veterans, everyone has to start somewhere.
Taste is a muscle. You can’t ask ChatGPT to give it to you, you gotta put in the reps.
You develop it by doing, by making bad work, getting feedback, exploring, revising. In product design, taste is about more than the aesthetics. It’s about identifying the right problems, solving them elegantly, and shaping the user’s journey thoughtfully.
Simon Sinek recently said on Diary of a CEO: “It’s when problems came up and you were forced to think, that now you’re much smarter than you were — because you did it.”
Discernment in design works the same way. You don’t just magically know what to do, you learn by figuring things out when you had no idea what you were doing. And you develop taste by trying, iterating, and discovering what resonates.
Design in the future
There will always be companies that cut corners — those that see AI-generated designs as “good enough” and value speed over quality.
But I like to use fashion as an analogy to think about this (cue Miranda Priestly’s monologue from The Devil Wears Prada). There are fast fashion brands that rip off trends and churn out disposable designs. But at the same time, there are luxury houses and independent designers who push the boundaries of fashion, innovate and obsess over craft.
https://medium.com/media/14324ef4041100860b18987729965ec2/href
I think the product design field will be similar.
Some companies will rely entirely on AI. Others will recognize the enduring value of thoughtful, human-centered design, and they’ll invest in human designers to craft their vision.
If AI reduces the number of open roles, investing in your own taste is how you stay competitive.
So don’t panic… yet.
AI is coming for our design jobs, but it can’t touch taste was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
This post first appeared on Read More