LA Examiner · 17 Mar 2026

When Judgment Becomes the Bottleneck

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LA Examiner – Hollywood hillside with the publication’s masthead

The LA Examiner ran a wide piece on how AI is changing the way work gets done. My part of it was about creative production – and once the tools can make almost anything, the question that actually matters is where the real work goes. The short answer: into judgment.

For years the constraints on creative work were physical – sets, travel logistics, the traditional bottlenecks. Take them away and the whole process is driven by ideas, execution, and iteration instead. The way I framed it for the Examiner: the environment adapts to the task, not the other way around.

We’re not coordinating physical resources anymore. We’re coordinating intelligence and taste. Every storyboard becomes possible. We can do a photo shoot on the moon if we want to.Björn Schneider, in the LA Examiner

That shift collapses the gap between imagination and output. What used to take months of coordination can be tested almost instantly, so teams spend less time managing logistics and more time refining the idea itself.

Suddenly, decision-making becomes the central element instead of wasting time organizing things.Björn Schneider, in the LA Examiner

Speed brings its own pressure, though. When execution is no longer the bottleneck, quality becomes the differentiator – and that comes down to people, not tools.

You need skilled people who know what good looks like. Everyone can use these tools, but not everyone can create something that stands out.Björn Schneider, in the LA Examiner

There’s an honest objection buried in all that freedom: if anyone can generate anything, won’t everything start to look the same? It’s a fair worry – and, I’d argue, a short-lived one. When production drops to near zero, sameness is the default, not the destiny; the only thing left to compete on is taste, and taste is the one thing these tools can’t mass-produce.

That is the whole point. The tools are now the easy part; the scarce skill is the discernment to tell what is worth making. Or, as the Examiner put it: