The New Stack Podcast

Keith Ballinger, Vice President at Google Cloud Platform Developer Experience, shares his insights on the evolving landscape of AI coding tools. He discusses the Gemini CLI and its role in enhancing developer workflows, advocating for writing clear documentation to collaborate with AI effectively. Ballinger believes programming will shift from writing code to articulating intent. He explores the resurgence of the command line, the importance of great writing for programmers, and how AI can transform software development into a cooperative effort.

Luca Antiga, CTO of Lightning AI and chair of the PyTorch Foundation Technical Advisory Council, shares insights from his journey in AI. He discusses PyTorch's evolution and its role in major AI advancements, emphasizing its flexibility in reinforcement learning and generative models. Antiga highlights the integration of projects like vLLM and DeepSpeed within the PyTorch ecosystem, all while maintaining a focus on user experience. He also touches on exciting trends like efficient learning models and the potential for future projects within the foundation.

Jyoti Bansal, co-founder and CEO of Harness and a seasoned entrepreneur, dives into the complexities of AI in software development. He reveals how AI tools often create bottlenecks in testing and deployment rather than speeding up the process. Bansal discusses the importance of human oversight and the role of specialized agents within Harness AI that enhance pipeline efficiency. He also shares insights on the evolving landscape of AI, likening its current hype to the dot-com bubble, which will ultimately lead to meaningful innovations.

Lin Sun, Head of Open Source at Solo.io, dives into the challenges of secure connectivity in the agentic AI landscape. She explains how Agentgateway enhances communication governance between AI agents and tools, contrasting it with traditional API gateways. Lin highlights the integration of protocols like MCP and A2A, and how it provides fine-grained access control for tool exposure. Major tech players like AWS and Microsoft are already involved, and she discusses the framework-agnostic benefits of combining Agentgateway with Kagent for a resilient AI ecosystem.

David Cramer, Founder and Chief Product Officer of Sentry, shares insights on the limitations of current generative AI in replacing human engineers. He emphasizes the importance of human oversight in AI debugging tools, specifically discussing Sentry's AI-driven tool, Seer, which aids in identifying root causes of errors. Cramer also details Sentry's shift from open source to a fair-source licensing model to prevent exploitation while maintaining accessibility. His reflections on LLMs highlight their potential in coding, yet underscore that they are not ready for production use due to reliability issues.

In this engaging discussion, Andrew Milich from Cursor and Tom Moor from Linear dive into the synergy between coding agents and project management. They explore how Cursor's AI coding agent can streamline workflows by integrating directly with Linear’s new agent-specific API. Key insights include the importance of providing agents with clear, contextual tasks rather than vague commands. They also touch on the future of autonomous agents and the potential for more companies to adopt agent-specific APIs to enhance productivity.

Pat Casey, CTO and co-founder of ServiceNow, shares insights on running 90% of their workloads, including AI, on physical servers. He discusses the benefits of their in-house GPU hubs for low-latency operations and how their new AI coding assistant, Windsurf, has boosted productivity by 10%. Casey raises concerns about the future of junior developers as AI tools take on traditional tasks, though he remains optimistic about AI's transformative potential despite challenges ahead.

Christopher "Crob" Robinson, Head of the Open Source Security Foundation, brings critical insights on the EU's Cyber Resilience Act. He underscores how compliance burdens threaten lone developers who often manage popular open source projects with limited resources. The discussion reveals alarming statistics, such as 97% of commercial software utilizing open source, while compliance could impose penalties in the billions. Robinson emphasizes the urgent need for funding models and collaboration to support these developers in navigating new regulatory landscapes.

In this discussion, Zach Lloyd, Founder and CEO of Warp, reveals how the Warp terminal has transformed into an agentic development environment. He introduces Warp Code, showcasing AI agents that assist in coding, debugging, and project management. Transparency in AI-generated code is emphasized, allowing developers to maintain control. Lloyd also shares the story behind their unique Western-themed product launch, featuring the quirky "Code on Warp" branding that set them apart. This evolution paves the way for a new era in coding productivity.

Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation, delves into the fragmented world of open source AI. He discusses the shift from foundational to open-weight models and emphasizes the need for a unified structure while valuing innovation. Zemlin views the industry's challenges regarding model transparency and the costs of developing frontier AI models with a pragmatic lens. He also highlights the growing open-source culture in China and the impacts of global regulations on the open source community, underscoring the fine balance between scale and agility.