Are AI tools making engineers worse—or just exposing who’s coasting?

Robert Welch (Chief Innovation Officer at APM Help) shares how his team ships zero-to-one products fast without letting AI erode core skills. We get into the guardrails that keep quality high (tests, CI/CD, enterprise privacy/no data retention), the difference between designing systems vs pasting code, and why AI should augment—not replace—judgment.

Plus: protecting yourself from scams, humanoid robots in property ops, and whether AI music can ever rival human craft.

Key topics

AI’s trade-off: speed vs. skill erosion
Guardrails that keep quality: tests, CI/CD, code review, metrics
Security & compliance in AI dev

Takeaways

Augment, don’t abdicate: think first, code second
Preserve craft: write tests, run reviews
Measure quality, not just speed: defects, rollbacks, coverage
Protect data and yourself: approved tooling, least-privilege, verify suspicious requests

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