The Trouble Was Never the Idea

On the Subject of Leadership · Jun 29, 2026 · 7m

Since 2005 Hollywood has compiled the Black List, an annual register of the screenplays its own executives most admire and have nonetheless declined to make—more than a thousand titles to date. The constraint was never the supply of ideas, and I argue that generative AI, by making plausible ideas nearly free, has changed nothing about what was always scarce: the judgement to tell a good idea from a merely plausible one, and the craft to make it stand up. What it has done is lower the cost of the plausible until the absence of judgement can no longer be overlooked. This is a standalone opinion…