Taste is the 'new' bottleneck

For most of my career, the expensive part of design was building the thing.

That cost has become close to zero.

Now I can describe an interface in a sentence and have a working prototype within 5 minutes. I can take the prototype ten different directions and throw nine of those away without feeling the loss, because none of them cost me anything to make.

Sounds amazing - but where does quality exist?

Our biggest constraint now is judgement. Which of the versions is right? What does 'right' mean?

Designers aren't trained for this. We're trained to make the thing well.

AI can't tell you which version should exist, really. It is an expert in producing infinite options forever. Taste is knowing which version meets the bar and thats what distinguishes us. That part doesn't get faster.

When I hear people talking about AI replacing designers - they are talking about the wrong thing. The question is which designers can exist amongst AI and which it will expose. If your value is in production - sorry you are obsolete. If your value is in good design judgement - you'll have more leverage than you've ever had.