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.

AI’s trade-off: speed vs. skill erosion

Guardrails that keep quality: tests, CI/CD, code review, metrics

Security & compliance in AI dev

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