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The Identity Crisis of the Prompter
We keep reaching for craft metaphors — chef, artisan, architect — because 'person who types instructions' doesn't feel like enough. Why?
5 min
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Series
3 posts •
~19 min total
The Taste Test
A three-part series on what happens when AI handles the making and humans are left with the judging. Starting with the identity crisis of losing your maker status, through the realization that taste is the new bottleneck, to a provisional answer: maybe the job was always about matching, not making.
If AI lacks taste buds, what does that make us? Chefs? Critics? Something else entirely?
This series started with a feeling most people in tech won’t say out loud: the weird vertigo of watching a machine do your job in four seconds. Not badly. Not brilliantly. Just… competently enough to make you question what your competence was worth.
The Arc:
- The Identity Crisis of the Prompter — We keep reaching for craft metaphors because “person who types instructions” doesn’t feel like enough. This post sits in that discomfort.
- The Taste Gap — If the crisis points anywhere, it points here. The bottleneck isn’t generation anymore — it’s judgment. And most of us aren’t developing ours.
- The Sommelier Argument — A provisional answer. Maybe the highest-value skill isn’t making or judging. It’s matching — knowing what’s right for this moment, this context, this person.
Each post challenges the one before it. The identity crisis asks what am I now? The taste gap answers the one who knows what’s good. The sommelier argument pushes back: knowing what’s good isn’t enough — you have to know what’s good for whom.
Reading Order
2
The Taste Gap
AI can produce endlessly. But it can't tell you what's good. That gap — between generation and judgment — might be the only thing that matters now.
6 min
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3
The Sommelier Argument
Maybe the highest-value skill in the AI era isn't making or judging. It's matching — knowing what's right for this moment, this audience, this context.
8 min
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