# Man and Machine: The Taste Gate

![Man and Machine: The Taste Gate](/writing/man-and-machine/the-taste-gate/assets/hero.jpg)

This morning I looked at one of our Man and Machine posts and had the odd feeling every operator will come to know: the system had done the job, and it still was not quite right\.

The package existed\. The image was usable\. The copy made the right point\. But the sentences were a little too clipped, the language was too tuned for insiders, and the visual world had started to repeat itself\. The man and the machine were back at the desk again, as if building with AI only happens under a lamp\.

So the real work was not a better prompt\. It was turning taste into an operating rule\. Future runs now have to read like flowing prose, stay plain enough for more people to follow, inspect recent images before choosing a scene, and put the same characters into the world: streets, whiteboards, cafés, libraries, airport lounges, anywhere real work actually happens\.

That is the leadership lesson hiding in a small content workflow\. Agents can produce, retry, and package\. But humans still have to name the standard, especially when “finished” and “right” are not the same thing\.

The teams that get value from AI will not be the ones that remove taste\. They will be the ones that teach the machine where taste lives\.

Where does your AI system need a taste gate, not another task?

\-dg

\#ManAndMachine \#AgenticAI \#AILeadership \#HumanInTheLoop \#OperatorMindset

## Sources

- [Original LinkedIn post](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7472974978561507328/)