Last night, I wandered into a jazz club in Palma de Mallorca at 9:30 p.m., the time I had reserved.
Only after I arrived did I realize that in Spain, a 9:30 reservation doesn’t necessarily mean the music starts at 9:30. It means you’re early.
Very early.
My cultural naïveté turned out to be a gift.
As the singer warmed up, she casually began singing “Feeling Good.”
Except there was nothing casual about it.
Even in her microphone test, she held tension inside the lyrics in a way that felt unexpected.
I remember thinking, This doesn’t fit my prediction for tonight.
For the €12 I paid for my seat, I had expected a pleasant evening of live jazz.
Instead, I had the unmistakable feeling that I was about to witness something extraordinary. And I was right. By the time she began her set, the small venue was packed. She held the attention of the audience for every note of her two hour set. She introduced new music she had written and had the audience singing along by the end of the song.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that, another thought surfaced:
That question has stayed with me because I don’t think it was really about music.
It was about one of the most valuable human capabilities in the age of AI.
We spend a lot of time talking about AI’s ability to predict.
It predicts the next word.
The next purchase.
The next click.
The next song we’ll probably enjoy.
Prediction is becoming abundant.
But sitting in that jazz club, I realized something.
The singer wasn’t validated by the market.
She wasn’t trending.
The metrics hadn’t caught up.
Yet almost everyone in that room knew they were witnessing something special.
That’s not prediction.
That’s judgment.
More specifically, it’s the ability to recognize unrealized potential before consensus exists.
Artists create before consensus.
Curators live in between.
Whether you’re a music producer, venture capitalist, editor, professor, hiring manager, or creative director, one of your greatest contributions isn’t simply creating.
It’s recognizing.
Seeing something the numbers haven’t yet confirmed.
Backing a person before everyone else agrees.
Taking reputational risk on someone else’s future.
That is an extraordinarily human act.
But it can’t tell us why someone matters.
Algorithms are remarkably good at surfacing what’s already gaining traction.
They’re far less equipped to explain why one performer can hold an entire room in suspended silence before releasing it into joy.
They can measure engagement.
They can’t fully account for presence.
They can count applause.
They can’t experience the emotional synchronization that happens when fifty strangers become one audience.
Those experiences remain embodied.
Human.
As AI lowers the cost of creating competent work, our ability to recognize extraordinary work becomes increasingly important.
The future won’t simply belong to people who can create.
It will belong to people who can identify what deserves attention before everyone else does.
That’s taste.
Not as aesthetic preference.
As informed human judgment.
Last night reminded me that one of our most valuable creative abilities isn’t making something from nothing.
It’s recognizing something extraordinary before the rest of the world catches up.
