Amarnath Vasireddy
Nvidia’s CEO Just Dropped a Hard Truth: “Smart” Is About to Become Worthless
When AI turns IQ into a commodity, only one human skill will remain scarce. Here is how to master it.
Shane Collins
Shane Collins
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5 min read
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Dec 9, 2025
Intelligence is about to be a commodity.”
When Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia and the man currently powering the global AI revolution, stood before students at Cambridge University, he didn’t talk about coding faster or studying harder.
He dropped a bomb on the modern education system.
For decades, society has sold us a specific formula for success: High IQ + Perfect Test Scores + Specialized Knowledge = A Secure Future. We hire the “smartest” people. We obsess over grades. We treat intelligence as a scarce, gold-standard resource.
But Huang is telling us that the era is over.
As AI rises, it doesn’t just compete with us; it laps us. It can score 100% on the test faster than you can pick up your pencil. It can write cleaner code, diagnose diseases, and summarize legal briefs in seconds.
In the very near future, raw intelligence will be like tap water or electricity: vital, yes, but cheap, abundant, and accessible to everyone with a Wi-Fi connection.
If “smart” is no longer special, what is left? If everyone has a supercomputer in their pocket, where does human value hide?
According to Huang, the answer isn’t a new technical skill. It is Taste.
The Era of “Poorly Defined Work”
You might think it sounds strange for a hardware engineer to talk about “taste.” It sounds vague — something meant for artists or fashion designers.
But in Huang’s world, taste is a hardcore engineering principle. It is the ultimate rational superpower.
He explains it simply: “When AI takes over all standardized work, the only value humans have left is to handle the poorly defined work.”
“The poorly defined work is the most valuable of all work.”
What does that look like?
Defined Work (AI Territory): “Write a Python script to scrape data from this website.” “Summarize this 50-page PDF.” “Calculate the structural load of this bridge.”
Poorly Defined Work (Human Territory): “What should our new product actually feel like?” “The market is crashing, and the data is contradictory — do we pivot left or right?” “Why do users hate this feature even though it works perfectly?”
These problems have no multiple-choice answers. AI cannot calculate the “correct” path because the path doesn’t exist yet.
To navigate this chaos, you need Taste.
Taste is the Art of Subtraction
In an age of information overload, Taste is the ability to look at infinite options and instantly identify what matters — and more importantly, what doesn’t.
When Nvidia decided to build CUDA (their parallel computing platform) years ago, the market didn’t want it. Wall Street didn’t understand it. AI wasn’t a “thing” yet.
How did Huang decide to bet the company on it?
“Strategy is not just about choosing what to do. It’s about choosing what not to do.”
This is the highest form of taste.
Imagine AI is an eager, hyper-efficient intern. You can ask it for 100 marketing taglines, and it will give them to you in 30 seconds.
If your taste is average (60/100), you will pick a mediocre tagline. The AI’s output is capped by your judgment.
If your taste is elite (90/100), you know which 99 taglines are garbage and which one will resonate with human emotion.
In the past, we were Creators — valued for how much we could produce. In the future, we must be Editors — valued for how well we can choose.
The “First Principles” Filter
How do you develop this elusive “Taste”? Is it something you’re born with?
No. It comes from First Principles thinking.
When faced with a complex problem, most people look at what others are doing (analogy). Huang looks at the physics of the problem. He breaks it down to the fundamental truths — computer science laws, physics, basic economics — and builds up from there.
“You reason about it from first principles… Once I could see it in my head, as far as I’m concerned, it might as well be real,” Huang says.
When you understand the essence of a thing, you stop chasing trends. You stop drowning in noise. You gain the confidence to say “No” to a thousand good ideas so you can say “Yes” to the one great idea.
That clarity? That is Taste.
Why AI Can’t Replace You (Yet)
There is one final ingredient to Taste that AI cannot replicate, no matter how many GPUs Nvidia sells.
Suffering.
“Greatness comes from character. Character comes out from people who have suffered.” — Jensen Huang.
AI has read every book in the Library of Congress, but it has never had a broken heart. It has never failed a startup. It has never felt the sting of a bad decision or the joy of a hard-won victory.
Your “Taste” is built on a foundation of your scars.
You know what empathy is because you’ve needed it.
You know what a user truly needs because you’ve been frustrated too.
You can spot a lie because you’ve been lied to.
These human experiences create a database of context that AI simply does not have. This context allows you to navigate the “undefined work” with intuition and wisdom, rather than just probability statistics.
Your 4-Step Survival Guide
So, the panic-inducing headline is true: Intelligence is becoming a commodity. But that isn’t the end of your career; it’s an evolution.
Jensen Huang says, “You will not lose your job to AI. You will lose your job to someone who uses AI.”
I will take it a step further: You will lose your job to someone with better Taste.
Here is how you start sharpening yours today:
1. Stop competing on “Smart.” Don’t try to out-memorize or out-calculate the machine. Let the AI be the encyclopedia. You be the author. Shift your identity from “The person who knows the answer” to “The person who asks the right question.”
2. Practice “Strategic Subtraction.” In your next project, don’t ask “What else can we add?” Ask “What can we remove?” Practice eliminating noise. The ability to identify the essential is the core of modern strategy.
3. Seek out “Poorly Defined” problems. Stop looking for checklists. Volunteer for the messy projects. The vague client requests. The chaotic brainstorming sessions. Comfort with ambiguity is your new job security.
4. Honor your scars. Don’t hide your failures. Analyze them. Your past struggles are the data points that form your intuition. They are the reason you can look at an AI-generated solution and say, “That works logically, but humans will hate it.”
The future belongs to the Editors, the Curators, and the decision-makers.
Smart is cheap. Taste is expensive. Go get some.
———————
Dear parent !
Thanks for reading till this far.
The above message is viral on WhatsApp. ( author unknown )
Now as a parent of Slate / Cognibot please answer this question !
What’s described as “ Taste “ in this message comes under which skill ( or a combo of which 2-3 skills ) in our scheme of Sampoornatha and Trayoda C ?
Please think and answer.
1. What exactly is “Taste” in the viral message?
From the message, “Taste” is NOT one single skill.
It is a meta-capability that emerges when multiple deep human skills work together.
“Taste” means the ability to:
• Judge what matters and what doesn’t
• Make decisions in ambiguity
• Sense human response beyond logic
• Say no to 100 good options and yes to 1 great one
• Apply lived experience, ethics, empathy, and intuition
• Handle poorly defined problems
So in Slate / Cognibot language, Taste = a convergence skill, not a subject skill.
2. Where does “Taste” fit in Sampoornatha?
Under Sampoornatha (Holistic Human Development), “Taste” primarily sits at the intersection of:
Cognitive Maturity
• First-principles thinking
• Ability to filter signal from noise
• Independent judgment (not herd thinking)
Emotional Intelligence
• Empathy
• Understanding human reactions
• Learning from failure, frustration, and experience
Ethical & Value-based Reasoning
• Knowing what should be done, not just what can be done
• Long-term thinking
• Responsibility and character
Conclusion (Sampoornatha):
“Taste” is the mature expression of Cognition + Emotion + Values.
3. Where does “Taste” fit in Trayoda C?
“Taste” is not one C, but a fusion of 3 key Cs.
Critical Thinking
• Questioning assumptions
• First-principles reasoning
• Evaluating AI outputs instead of blindly accepting them
(“AI gives 100 answers — I know which 99 are useless”)
Creativity (Higher-order Creativity)
• Not creating more, but choosing better
• Strategic subtraction
• Vision, product sense, originality
(This is editor-level creativity, not artist-level only)
Character
• Built through struggle, failure, discipline, and ethics
• Moral courage to say “no”
• Integrity in decision-making
(This is what AI cannot replicate)
(Optional but Supporting)
Communication
• Translating intuition into decisions others can follow
• Explaining why one choice is better
Conclusion (Trayoda C):
“Taste” = Critical Thinking + Creativity + Character
(with Emotional Intelligence running underneath)
4. Why this matters deeply for Slate / Cognibot parents
Most education systems are still producing:
• Answer-givers
• Rule-followers
• Checklist-solvers
But the future belongs to:
• Question framers
• Judgment makers
• Editors, not executors
What Jensen Huang calls “Taste” is exactly what Slate / Cognibot is future-proofing:
• Children who can work with AI, not compete against it
• Children comfortable with ambiguity
• Children who can make human decisions in an AI world
5. Final One-Line Mapping (Clear Answer)
“Taste” in the viral message corresponds to the integrated outcome of Sampoornatha, and in Trayoda C it primarily emerges from the combination of Critical Thinking + Creativity + Character.
That is elite human capital — and that is precisely what AI cannot commoditize.
