“Execution is cheap” is something I hear a lot. Obviously all over X, but also inside my company. Maybe it’s time we added the second part: So it is for everybody else too.

“Cheap” is supposed to mean that it’s faster to build products than ever, and that it takes fewer resources to build them.

As with most things, I thought about it through the lens of running. If everyone suddenly got an upgrade that made them run 10x faster, and we said “running is easy,” I’d think we had missed the point. Sure, everyone would cover more distance in a shorter time, but relative to everyone else, would anything have really changed?

Then again, the analogy isn’t quite right. AI isn’t upgrading everyone, or every company, equally. The degree to which AI is helpful varies widely. Some have gotten a 100x upgrade. Others have gotten maybe 2–3x. And some are just running that much faster on a collision course without realizing it.

Building something happens in stages: conception, formation, execution, distribution, and adaptation. You have the spark, shape it into something coherent, build it, release it, and then learn from how the world responds.

When we say “execution is cheap,” it’s often understood to mean that the thinking behind the execution matters less. Why not implement every idea you have when execution is cheap, right? Why spend time deciding when you could be building? A spark, an idea, is all you need in the age of abundant intelligence, because execution is cheap.

You can build what you were building before in less time and probably with less money. But so can your competition. And while the cost of building one thing might have fallen, if you end up building much more without increasing revenue or profits, execution starts to look a lot more expensive. So, ramping up execution without also getting better at judgment and strategy seems misplaced. Those are what determine how you differentiate from the rest.

Abundant intelligence makes execution cheaper. Human judgment determines whether something’s worth doing, and so is still worth preserving.