In episode 124 of This Week in Quality, host Ady Stokes kicks off with a birthday celebration for co-host Demi Van Malcot, a quick time-warp reflection on how fast the show has grown, and a week packed with community energy. Demi shares a bumpy “birthday week in quality” that includes a test data crisis, a perfectly-timed article on cognitive load, and the buzz of the Epic Test Quest launch party. Ad highlights the momentum around WIZZO, an AI helper embedded in Slack that’s being shaped by the testing community through real feedback and iteration.

The conversation quickly turns into a lively and honest debate about AI guardrails and the growing sense of “enough already.” Demi talks about struggling to concentrate on audio content, laughing at MoT wordplay, and eyeing chapter meetups as a “meetup tourist.” Ady shares his own packed week, including a Call for Insights conversation with Simon about making “thinking in testing” more visible and an aspirational goal of writing a book, alongside ongoing work on the Software Quality Engineering Certificate and shout-outs to community contributions showing up in newsletters.

From there, the episode leans hard into the AI dilemma. Ad raises the growing public conversation about AI in high-stakes domains like healthcare and online safety, asking what responsibility belongs to platforms versus users. Judy joins with a candid “big sAIgh,” pushing back on pressure to adopt AI tools that require constant supervision and verification, and questioning what “genuine” even means when AI-generated content floods professional spaces. Her rant lands so well it becomes a running theme, affectionately labelled “rainbow vomit,” complete with new community emoji energy.

The stage fills with real-world stories. Christine celebrates Epic Test Quest’s graduation and launch, shares what it took to ship while wrangling AI hallucinations during refactors, and invites the community deeper into building tools by testers for testers. Chris Pratt reflects on how in-person MoT London events became an inflection point for his confidence and involvement, and shares a sponsor update plus a reminder to unregister if you can’t attend so people on the waitlist can join. Shawn adds a skeptical perspective on AI adoption, pointing out the risk of using AI to fill roles nobody in the organisation can properly validate, and reframing the dream as AI reducing burnout rather than replacing human empathy. Nadja shares a behind-the-scenes view from an AI-driven project where she’s effectively “the guardrail,” putting processes and checks in place after months without a tester and watching developers finally prioritise quality thinking.

Across the episode, the group returns to a few sharp ideas: AI might make us more efficient but not more effective, quality folks are often the ones forced to provide the guardrails, and the industry is inventing new vocabulary to describe what’s happening, from hallucinations to confabulation. The result is a funny, messy, and very real community conversation about how to keep standards high when the tools are moving faster than our ability to trust them.