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00:00:00:25 - 00:00:20:01

GEOFF NIELSON

Hey everyone! I'm super excited to be sitting down with Rory Richardson. She's one of the most fun and exciting voices in AI right now. What's so awesome about Rory is that while on paper, her specialty is how AI is transforming the way we code. Every time I speak with her. We end up having these fascinating conversations that can go absolutely anywhere.

00:00:20:04 - 00:00:38:05

GEOFF NIELSON

When I sat down with her last year at the Info-Tech LIVE conference in Vegas, we talked about everything from the perfect toaster to using AI for Dungeons and Dragons. I do want to hear about what's going on with AI and whether it's going to turbocharge or kill coding, but honestly, I'm excited to see what else she's going to throw at me while we're at it.

00:00:38:08 - 00:00:43:29

GEOFF NIELSON

Let's find out.

00:00:44:01 - 00:01:04:06

GEOFF NIELSON

Hey, Roy, just just before we get too deep into it, I wanted to tell you, I don't know if you remember, from, from live and in Vegas. Talking to Joel, who's my boss. But he was, I don't know if you remember him. He was a huge fan of yours. And completely, completely. True story. When we started this podcast, he said, Jeff, it's two people I want on my podcast.

00:01:04:08 - 00:01:08:00

GEOFF NIELSON

I want Bill gates and I want worry back.

00:01:08:02 - 00:01:20:11

RORY RICHARDSON

Okay, that's a little freaky. Just saying, like, that's top billing. Like after like, y'all's production for your business is like next level.

00:01:20:14 - 00:01:35:04

GEOFF NIELSON

Oh. Thank you. Yeah. We're excited. We've got actually the next one coming up, in a few months in June, but, yeah. No, we have fun. And and we are so glad that you could, Yeah. Keynote there last time. So, so, you know, I wanted to ask you on that note, Roy, it's been, you know, it's been a few months since we last spoke.

00:01:35:04 - 00:01:53:20

GEOFF NIELSON

I think, like since September, which is like, I don't know, it feels like we're living in dog years right now, both in terms of, like, technology and society. So, you know, I wanted to just start off by asking, you know, in that time, like, what's what's new in your world as you look at the world, what are you most excited about?

00:01:53:20 - 00:01:56:06

GEOFF NIELSON

What are you most worried about?

00:01:56:08 - 00:02:17:03

RORY RICHARDSON

Okay. That's a, first of all, I agree with the dog years. I feel like and we used to joke, like working at Amazon. You have to measure it in dog years because it's such an intense place to work. I've gone from dog years to, like, fruit fly. All right? Like there's been a progression. Because you're right, everything changes with generative AI every, every week.

00:02:17:06 - 00:02:53:15

RORY RICHARDSON

And especially in the developer experience, which is it is wonderful. The progress that the technology is making is like every week is leaps and bounds, different and more advanced. I would say the thing that there's two things that have happened in my world that have made me super happy, one we launched the, two command line interface that's using sonnet 3.7, and it is fabulous, like it's the week over week.

00:02:53:15 - 00:03:20:27

RORY RICHARDSON

Fastest, most adopted piece of the umbrella of Q developer. And the things that I see, people that are able to do with it, it is absolutely astounding. I mean, anecdotally, my own team who, are building, you know, mini apps just with the command line interface. So no code, just using command line interface. And they've decided to try to out at each other.

00:03:21:00 - 00:03:32:20

RORY RICHARDSON

You're in. Here's some examples of the apps they are building with the command line interface. Number one a Rori decoder. They built an app to translate me.

00:03:32:22 - 00:03:34:28

GEOFF NIELSON

Wow, wow.

00:03:35:01 - 00:03:47:29

RORY RICHARDSON

Another person on my team, built a natural language interface for creating Dungeons and Dragons maps for his campaigns. And we did in there. Really cool.

00:03:47:29 - 00:03:51:29

GEOFF NIELSON

So we're out with two examples. We already have the full spectrum.

00:03:52:01 - 00:04:16:14

RORY RICHARDSON

Yes. We're really improving workplace productivity over here. Yeah, yeah. I mean, so and I think I and last time we talked, I talked about this, but I'm going to double down on it. We are paying people to play now because to play is the, is the highest cognitive load in the most creative and humanistic aspect of our work.

00:04:16:17 - 00:04:42:12

RORY RICHARDSON

And it's a shift, like, culturally because, you know, Amazon, we pay for results. But our results are experiments, which means play. And that's a it's a, it's a mind shift because the most valuable thing that humans do is something new that. Right. But nothing else can replicate that. Not generative. They are not anything. So that's number one.

00:04:42:18 - 00:05:08:12

RORY RICHARDSON

Number two is there has been a shift in the market since we last talk that I think is super interesting. And that's, the rise of the ID. So the ID, you know, your developer environment has not changed in ten, 15 years. Like, yes, code and JetBrains have been fairly static. The plugins haven't, but just the IDE has.

00:05:08:14 - 00:05:29:07

RORY RICHARDSON

And what we have seen is the rise of new ideas that are optimized for AI and that has been fascinate, because one of the things that these new ideas are really great at is collaboration. Now, collaborative is not the first 20 adjectives I associate with a developer.

00:05:29:10 - 00:05:30:21

GEOFF NIELSON

Right.

00:05:30:24 - 00:05:31:26

RORY RICHARDSON

I mean I think we.

00:05:31:27 - 00:05:33:06

GEOFF NIELSON

Maybe see them 20.

00:05:33:08 - 00:05:58:28

RORY RICHARDSON

Two. I think we basically invented object oriented programing and languages in order to not talk to each other like, you know, you have this thing to do. And I had this thing to do. And eventually, if we will, we'll give each other the right commands so they will talk to each other. Well, with these AI powered ideas, you are collaborating with agents, right?

00:05:58:28 - 00:06:29:24

RORY RICHARDSON

So then, it's like having junior developers all around you helping on one project, which is a very different style of, coding. Then I learned how to code, which was, you know, very focused, but kind of isolating, you know, Mindscape thing. But now instead of, like, composing music for one violin, you're composing music for the entire orchestra all at the same time, all at once.

00:06:29:27 - 00:06:44:15

RORY RICHARDSON

It's a different it's a different flow of, of getting stuff done. So, you know, people have been calling it vibe coding. I don't know if you heard. I figured that, yeah, I'm in the mix is about it because.

00:06:44:21 - 00:06:47:06

GEOFF NIELSON

I don't think about vibe coding.

00:06:47:08 - 00:07:14:14

RORY RICHARDSON

Again. I'm old. I feel old because I'm like, I don't get it. So being able to get into the zone and orchestrate instead of author is is sort of the quintessential part, vibe coding. Now, I was talking to one of our leaders here at Amazon and he was like, vibe coding. But isn't it nice to know what you're doing?

00:07:14:14 - 00:07:52:07

RORY RICHARDSON

Like, isn't it isn't that nice? Which cracked me up because I don't I don't think he's wrong, but I don't think he's completely right either, because you still have to have that artisan mindset of creating something out of the ether that, that that's your developer mindset. So I think you do sort of know what you're doing, but it is a but it was it's enough of the cognitive shift when you're in that mode that I think that is representing a major shift in technology that's happened in the last six months.

00:07:52:09 - 00:08:10:25

GEOFF NIELSON

And I'm I love the I love the orchestra analogy. That that one really resonates with me. And no, no, no pun intended there with music. I'm curious. I'm curious to like. But when I think about this and I think about the way people treat it, like, is this similar to, like, when photography started versus like painting?

00:08:10:25 - 00:08:25:24

GEOFF NIELSON

Like, I feel like people oh, it's not it's not art. You just took a picture and it's like, okay, like we yes, there's technology involved, but you know, there's still artistry involved too. Or is that like way out of left field or not? The right metaphor.

00:08:25:26 - 00:08:46:22

RORY RICHARDSON

I don't I'll have to think about it more if that. If that one works for me, I'll just have to think about it a little more, because the metaphor that I use the most is differential equations, which, by the way, this like, okay, Paul. Yeah. You know, this joke actually plays with our core audience, right? Because I swear every engineer took difficult, right?

00:08:46:25 - 00:09:15:13

RORY RICHARDSON

And especially old people like me when I took defeat you, you weren't allowed to, you know, you had to do everything manually and one difficult equation when you, when you were taking the test would be like four pages, right, as you're solving through from equations and then and then eventually there was that day, that magic day that the professor let you have a T 65 on the test and you were like, you know what?

00:09:15:15 - 00:09:50:20

RORY RICHARDSON

What it now did, did the T 65 kill differential equations? Nope. People still take it in knowing how to apply different differential equations. Right? That's still there. The creativity of understanding how to apply different concepts that never went away. What changed was that the results are way more reliable, right? I mean, and I started right, like I always felt sorry for the Tas because like, I mean, I was really good at math, I was terrible at arithmetic.

00:09:50:20 - 00:10:20:18

RORY RICHARDSON

And so within those four pages, you know, one, one arithmetic error would just mess up your, your entire thing. And so the Tas would go have to go through and give you partial credit. I feel really sorry for them. But once we applied a T 65 to that, the cognitive load of mathematics shifted. And I, I think and I think that's what we are witnessing right now is we're basically giving developers.

00:10:20:18 - 00:10:49:20

RORY RICHARDSON

I a development calculator that accelerates and improves the quality and accuracy of the code, but it doesn't actually change computer science. It just it changes how we are relating to the test. We were really attacking muck, right? Not not the hard stuff, not the creative stuff, not the the risky stuff or the sexy stuff of development. Yes, I said development sexy.

00:10:49:22 - 00:11:23:09

RORY RICHARDSON

But the boring parts, like the syntax of a language no one cares anymore. Like an ancient text is boring in my opinion. But I think that's shifted. And I think how we are going to relate to all technology, has fundamentally shifted. And that and what will we see the most impact within developer developer tools and access to technology sort of thing?

00:11:23:12 - 00:12:00:27

RORY RICHARDSON

I think what we're going to see over the next two years is it's going to affect every persona, within your software development lifecycle. Forevermore. And that means, the, the things that we are already able to do with you affecting DevOps operations, cloud architects, and eventually DBA is like, there's something for everyone, which means that it's going to accelerate and democratize how we relate to technology for all time and space.

00:12:00:29 - 00:12:35:26

RORY RICHARDSON

And, and I got a 15 year old kid and I think about these innovations through his eyes that this is the normal right? This is just normal. And I'm like, I don't know what's going to happen. So let's get to the part in the second part of your question, what scares the crap out of me? This scares the crap out of me because if you it every inflection point where you are accelerating and democratizing, you have to build the plane as you're flying it and you have to build the guardrails at the same time.

00:12:36:00 - 00:12:59:12

RORY RICHARDSON

I mean, think about think about cars, right? What's car start hitting the road? We didn't have speed limits. We didn't have traffic laws. We had cars. That's that's what it feels like right now, is we can go super fast. Wouldn't that be great if we had some traffic laws?

00:12:59:14 - 00:13:32:29

GEOFF NIELSON

So just reflecting on that and you know, the traffic law like. Yeah, that's it's it's it's fair. Right. Like it's always the, the regulations are always like, you know 1 to 2 steps behind like the technology. But I want to come back to what you were saying about, the kind of what it means to be a developer and how much is this is changing, and you know, how this is going to change again, like through the next two years in your mind, like what does development look like, you know, in, in 2027, 2028?

00:13:32:29 - 00:13:39:09

GEOFF NIELSON

Like what does it mean to be a developer once we kind of go through this shift?

00:13:39:12 - 00:14:07:03

RORY RICHARDSON

I think having a Babelfish for all languages. Will will change the languages themselves. And for those of you who didn't read Douglas Adams of Babel, fish was a universal translator. You stuck in your ear if you are able to. I mean, and most developers know like 2 or 3 languages. But the thing about those two three languages is they're usually in the same language families.

00:14:07:03 - 00:14:34:08

RORY RICHARDSON

It's like, yeah, I learned Spanish and French, whereas what would what this is going to be able to fils facilitate is new development architectures. And one of the in order to be able to explain that concept, think about like COBOL. COBOL is a function based language. It's not object oriented at all. Like you scribe the CPU at the function level.

00:14:34:08 - 00:15:05:24

RORY RICHARDSON

And then the messaging broker is the neural network of COBOL. So the very architecture of the language is unique compared to object oriented. So it's not about the language translation between COBOL and Python. Right. It's a it's the architecture of the language itself that that's really challenging to move between. Jarring of AI smashes abstraction layers. Right. It compresses them.

00:15:05:27 - 00:15:51:09

RORY RICHARDSON

So the diversification that we've seen of computer languages since there was a computer language, Leo from assembler on up, I, I really think that's going to compress because those abstraction layers, you know, are performance against different pillars or matrix. But I don't I don't know if that's entirely necessary. If you are smart, if you if you compress the abstraction layers, the other thing that's going to change for developers, and this really speaks to the democratization piece, is a lot of studies that we're seeing as far as the impact a journey of AI on this particular population is about getting your most junior noobs more performant.

00:15:51:15 - 00:16:20:11

RORY RICHARDSON

That's where we see, like the biggest impact change, not really in your master veteran developers, but really in the new population. So that democratization piece is really fascinating to me because, it's opening the aperture of who's going to be able to relate to the technology. I mean, I gave the example of the command line interface, and those are all know code, right?

00:16:20:14 - 00:16:59:27

RORY RICHARDSON

That so when my kid is applying for a job in 27. Is it going to relate to language in the same way the computer language is not the same way? Probably not. But the role of invention, context switching, synthesis, those higher order, ideas that that make humans super valuable are going to be even more valuable. There's going to be a stronger delineation because you can't just show up and do a 9 to 5, because a lot of that, that mucky stuff that you just, you know, clocking in, clocking out is going to be automated.

00:17:00:00 - 00:17:16:29

RORY RICHARDSON

So that means that we have to shift what we value most in each other and in our work because of that, democratized piece. And that automation piece is going to be hugely impactful across all the job fields.

00:17:17:01 - 00:17:33:08

GEOFF NIELSON

Right? So I'm very much of the same mind. And there's like, there's a lot of things I want to talk to you about right now. Right. There's a lot of directions I want to take this in. But one of them is I want to come back to this notion of play that you mentioned before, because to me, like this ties back in, right?

00:17:33:08 - 00:18:07:26

GEOFF NIELSON

Like as we think about people free from the muck of development, the play becomes more important, the innovating becomes more important. The, you know, the the mindset of like what? You know, what is the art of the possible? How could we do this better kind of take center stage. And so I'm curious, you know, and maybe at Amazon specifically or if you have any, you know, client examples, this is sometimes a tough mindset to get like business folks or non developers maybe call it management into like you say like hey we want to play.

00:18:07:26 - 00:18:29:21

GEOFF NIELSON

And they say that's cute. But like we've got a quarterly number to head and you've got a release schedule, you know, get back to work. And so my question is like, is that a challenge? Is that tough to sell? And how do you get the, you know, the ecosystem of leaders who, you know, you know, God bless them, are doing their own jobs and want to see results.

00:18:29:26 - 00:18:37:28

GEOFF NIELSON

How do you get them to to give you permission to get out of the grind and be able to to think longer term and bigger picture?

00:18:38:00 - 00:18:49:03

RORY RICHARDSON

Yeah. In 2024, I think every CFO thought they could lay off 40% of their developers, right? Right. They were like we had developer productivity. It turns out we haven't heard anybody yet.

00:18:49:06 - 00:18:54:14

GEOFF NIELSON

Yeah. And turns out that they actually never they never really understood the value of a developer. Right. If they thought they could.

00:18:54:16 - 00:18:59:28

RORY RICHARDSON

They had no idea what their developers were doing. Like, no, they thought, you know, was right.

00:18:59:28 - 00:19:02:20

GEOFF NIELSON

Lines of code. Right. You just type on keyboards all day.

00:19:02:25 - 00:19:34:04

RORY RICHARDSON

Yeah. 40 hours a week, turns out. Yeah, it's more like 4 to 5 hours a week. Like like that's just a component, of what they'll do. I think I think the, the revolution is happening to management as well. And they're feeling it just as much. So I had two examples. One, back in, I don't know, February, January of 2023.

00:19:34:04 - 00:19:56:13

RORY RICHARDSON

I'd asked my son to start doing his homework with chat. And then very quickly the school was like, you can't do chat. You can't use chat for your homework. It's cheating. The schools were telling my kids this was this was cheating. Yeah. So I had a parent teacher conference. I'm very popular at school. I'm not, rebel or I was like.

00:19:56:15 - 00:20:31:08

RORY RICHARDSON

How many hours per week are you grading papers? Because I can show you how to do that a lot faster. Would it be cool if you were able to create a lesson plan, specifically for the behavior characteristics you see in the class? Like, what if you just research and analyze the characteristics that the kids were exhibiting and then curtail or customize your lesson plan according to what you're the behavior characteristics, I can show you how to do analysis much faster.

00:20:31:10 - 00:21:03:29

RORY RICHARDSON

And they and what they were hearing was they can get to happy hour sooner and all of a sudden their opinion don't share, did they? I changed because it was real to them. Right. So it it in other words, it's not about control. It's about just finding the value in the right lever. The same thing, by the way, it happened to me personally about the same time because we had these mandatory docs that are that we do in Amazon in Q1 across the entire organization.

00:21:04:02 - 00:21:27:28

RORY RICHARDSON

And they're confidential in there was there's one team that I was managing that had all of their docs done on time, and they were excellent. And I'm like, what did you do wrong? They were like, oh, we used chat. And I was like, first of all, why aren't the rest of you doing this? Second of all, I don't think that's.

00:21:28:00 - 00:22:09:13

RORY RICHARDSON

Like, oh, and third. Holy moly. We we just we just had a huge cognitive shift in management. Even before I, we fully felt the effects for the developer audience. So I don't think it's about our management giving permission because when you when you talk to a CFO and you give them a natural language interface to do ad hoc queries and analysis using, you know, things like Q for QuickSight, that, that that accelerates their, monthly business reporting review and gets them to happy hour sooner.

00:22:09:15 - 00:22:36:13

RORY RICHARDSON

So there is, you know, they're they're it's it is literally affecting every job family that we touch. And so it's only the like really, old stodgy people that are like, get off my lawn. You get used to by that is going to be left behind. It's not this is just the the new normal across everything now.

00:22:36:16 - 00:22:44:13

GEOFF NIELSON

Yeah. So old stodgy people we had, when we last spoke in.

00:22:44:16 - 00:22:46:22

RORY RICHARDSON

So let's talk about the old people.

00:22:46:28 - 00:23:10:12

GEOFF NIELSON

Let's talk about the old people, Rory. Because when we when we spoke last, you were saying. And you did say, like you didn't want to be a guest. But after you said that, you said that you found the biggest indicator of willingness to adopt generative AI tools was age, and that younger people tended to be much more willing to experiment.

00:23:10:14 - 00:23:37:24

GEOFF NIELSON

Older, stodgy or people tended to, you know, be more set in their ways. I'm already a master coder. I mean, two questions for you is that is that still holding? True. And in the time since we've had that conversation, and and if it is like what what are the implications for that. Like do we risk having kind of like a bifurcated workforce where you've got half of people or, you know, some fraction doing it the new way, some fraction not coming along for the ride?

00:23:37:27 - 00:23:44:10

GEOFF NIELSON

And what do you do about it? You just have to wait for them to retire. Or is there some way know like take a happy path?

00:23:44:12 - 00:24:00:20

RORY RICHARDSON

I, one it's not just Asia. It's, any. Because I don't know, being stuck in your ways is not necessarily, just age, so I, I, I was hyperbolic in my roofing, knee high curveball. Like, who knew that?

00:24:00:20 - 00:24:04:16

GEOFF NIELSON

Can't be right. That doesn't sound like.

00:24:04:19 - 00:24:27:25

RORY RICHARDSON

But there is definitely a divide. And there there's definitely a lot of fun, with certain populations that are risk averse or, you know, they don't want to try a new way of doing things. But I don't I don't think the divide, it will last because humans are wonderfully lazy. We're just lazy, right? We're we don't do work for the sake of work.

00:24:27:27 - 00:25:06:10

RORY RICHARDSON

And when you have part of your workforce, that's doing something faster and is more efficient, and the other ones like, no, I want to stay late and do this manually. Not that it doesn't happen right. I mean, and again, I'm going to date myself here, but remember when we were all switching to email, you know, like, I know you don't because you're sweet, young, but okay, in the 90s, just culturally, humans were shifting to email as the primary communication method for business.

00:25:06:13 - 00:25:33:08

RORY RICHARDSON

Instead of, like, faxes or typewriters or whatever. You know, it became email. And, the question was like, does this destroy free writing? You know, when you when you have we are switching to email. And there was a lot of, you know, senior executives that would want all of their emails printed out. I think Warren Buffett still does.

00:25:33:08 - 00:26:01:22

RORY RICHARDSON

But, yeah, those those that that didn't last. It was inefficient. Right. And yeah, it just doesn't it like humans adopt new technology because we're just wonderfully lazy people. You know, I don't I don't see that that that is, mind you, the this conversation has shifted pretty far away from technology. And now we're into, you know, armchair sociology, which I'm not qualified to answer.

00:26:01:28 - 00:26:30:26

RORY RICHARDSON

But I can see how humans are interacting with technology and different trends. But I don't see anyone being left behind in this, namely because it's easy, Don, easy to use, right? It's not like you have to learn a new programing language. It's it's all through natural language. And that that means that the adoption has been transformative over the past 18 months because it's just so darn easy.

00:26:30:28 - 00:26:56:24

RORY RICHARDSON

I was going to say one other thing, and this is probably the most controversial thing that I can possibly say. I really hope I don't get fired, but, this is, is very famous for saying there's no compression algorithm for experience. So remember when I was talking about the the younger developers becoming more performant? What if there is what if there is a compression algorithm for experience?

00:26:56:24 - 00:27:14:11

RORY RICHARDSON

And what if with this, is it, because we, we, we now have the ability to do pattern recognition on a really, really large scale, which prevents mistakes. And that's that's what you're most experienced developers to.

00:27:14:14 - 00:27:15:29

GEOFF NIELSON

Right.

00:27:16:01 - 00:27:20:08

RORY RICHARDSON

So maybe we happen again. Bezos. Don't fire me.

00:27:20:11 - 00:27:32:05

GEOFF NIELSON

So that's a really interesting point, Rory. And I don't know I mean, maybe it's maybe it's controversial and I'll knock on wood that, you know, you're still employed there next week, but, thanks.

00:27:32:08 - 00:27:52:01

GEOFF NIELSON

When I talk to people on here, one of the things I hear more frequently is that it's actually junior staff that are most at risk of being disrupted by AI in the sense of like, oh, well, we don't need junior devs anymore because AI is just as good a coder as a junior dev is. And you know, your approach is different.

00:27:52:04 - 00:28:20:06

GEOFF NIELSON

The what I hear you saying is actually they have the most to gain because you can now get from a junior to, you know, being seasoned faster than ever before. So, just to, to put a fine point on it, like if you're, you know, in your son's cohort and you're going to be going I mean, I'm not I'm not suggesting he's going into CSS, but if you're going into comp sci, you know, should you be concerned or is this like a more exciting time than ever?

00:28:20:08 - 00:28:55:01

RORY RICHARDSON

Okay, whether or not I'm concerned or not, as a mother doesn't matter. No, I'm not really. I mean, because this is happening, y'all, like, you can be fearful about it, or you could be happy about it, but doesn't really matter because it's still going to happen. Like this is the new normal. I think. What I try to emphasize with my kids is like is grit and creativity, because I don't think either of those things are going away as necessary for like being happy and successful for the rest of your life.

00:28:55:03 - 00:29:36:26

RORY RICHARDSON

So grit, creativity, those are those are still very important. The most human things possible as far as like being concerned. What, what keeps me up at night or what? What I'm most concerned about is, It is bad actors doing really naughty things with this technology. And. You know, white hats, not being able to create, and remediate, fast enough because everything this is like napalm.

00:29:36:28 - 00:30:14:10

RORY RICHARDSON

That's probably a bad word. This is like, this is a massive accelerant in both scenarios. So our ability to detect anomalies across a large data set, let's say, I don't know, logs massively improved. Right. Because airlines are fantastic of taking massive amounts of data and then analyzing it super quickly. So are that that white hat's push has been greatly accelerated and so is the white cat activities that you could do.

00:30:14:10 - 00:30:37:27

RORY RICHARDSON

It's a massive accelerant. So the thing that keeps me up at night is just I want to enable and infect people's imagination for doing good things, because only then we'll have guardrails that actually protect people. I talk about my son a lot in the context of generative AI, because, well, it's fun to experiment on your kids. When it comes to technology.

00:30:38:00 - 00:31:07:01

RORY RICHARDSON

And the metaphor that I'm going to give you is really apropos to generative AI. The other day he came into the kitchen and he smelled like gasoline and I'm like, why do you smell like gasoline? You're like, maybe rocket fuel. And I was like, okay. Yeah. Did you light it? You. And now he realizes there's something up and he's like, no, of course he lit it.

00:31:07:03 - 00:31:28:26

RORY RICHARDSON

I did not have a no rocket fuel rule in my house. Right. Like I didn't even know I needed one that was not in the manual. Okay, so we had to come up with a new rule in order to accommodate, like, future experimentation, which is if you have a spark, you need an adult within ten feet in a cell phone.

00:31:28:28 - 00:31:29:23

GEOFF NIELSON

Right?

00:31:29:25 - 00:31:54:28

RORY RICHARDSON

Okay. Like, there needs to be a backup plan. I'm not saying no spark. I'm just saying backup plan. So it was about a guardrail, then a discrete rule. And as we think about job I, it's that same sort of mentality. You can't have specific rules. Like instead you've got to have, guardrails for good sense more so than specific traffic laws.

00:31:55:00 - 00:32:17:07

RORY RICHARDSON

Right. We're not traffic loss stage at all. We're at here. Don't run over people. Only that that's a good rule. I mean that that's a good rule. But specifically, what do you need to do in order to ensure that you're not running over people? Those discrete rules? I don't I don't think we're going to get to anytime soon, mainly because of.

00:32:17:07 - 00:32:17:28

GEOFF NIELSON

The.

00:32:18:01 - 00:32:24:13

RORY RICHARDSON

Wildly creative aspects of what you're able to do with the technology.

00:32:24:16 - 00:32:44:26

GEOFF NIELSON

Right. So have you seen, you know, I'm curious, and we're getting dangerously close to mixing metaphors here, but yeah. What have you seen? Rocket fuel situations with black hat actors in in AI that you can share either first hand or second hand that you're like, holy moly. Like that was creative. Like, I didn't know you could do that.

00:32:44:26 - 00:32:49:04

GEOFF NIELSON

This is starting to open up like big concerns.

00:32:49:07 - 00:33:16:11

RORY RICHARDSON

To be honest. And this is just because, I think I'm in a I'm in my own little bubble. I haven't seen that a lot. I think one of the biggest concerns I hear from CEOs and CTOs is the injection of malicious code. You know, because somebody said, oh, I thought this coding suggestion was great. So I put it in and yeah, and they're in, they're terrified of it.

00:33:16:11 - 00:33:21:23

RORY RICHARDSON

But I haven't seen it to I haven't seen the, that happen.

00:33:21:26 - 00:33:22:18

GEOFF NIELSON

Right.

00:33:22:20 - 00:33:46:26

RORY RICHARDSON

Really. Because here's the deal. If a developer wants to put malicious code into anything is this is not that hard. I'm here to. Well, look, you can get malicious code on StackOverflow. Cut, paste. You're done. Journey of AI is just an accelerant. Either way. And if I had a developer that was, you know, putting in malicious code, do I blame generative AI like I would a human?

00:33:46:26 - 00:34:10:14

RORY RICHARDSON

No, I fired the developer. Right? I mean, like, it's still like, this is not a we use the word agent a lot. And in the noise that cried out of me because no one seems to have a consistent definition. But the thing about having agency is something we usually ascribe to humans, because they are responsible and they have choice.

00:34:10:16 - 00:34:44:25

RORY RICHARDSON

But we're not at that stage yet with this technology at all. And if you if you have a human that is using this tool to do naughty things, you still you still blame the human. Okay, we don't blame the technology. I would still fire the developer for introducing that code. It's just this there there's a shift right from, like I said, authorship to orchestration doesn't that doesn't mean that you have given up responsibility and ownership to technology that we're just.

00:34:44:28 - 00:35:01:09

RORY RICHARDSON

We're just not there. That would be silly. In the CFO example that we were talking about, if the CFO reported bad numbers because he used Jared, did I? We would fire the CFO. We wouldn't fire the tool.

00:35:01:12 - 00:35:18:19

GEOFF NIELSON

No, that's a great, that that's a great case in point to bring it on, that the CFO case is still is still very interesting to me. And I, you know, I hear about it and I imagine it that there's still CFOs out there that are saying like, but when, when can we fire 40% of developers? Right.

00:35:18:19 - 00:35:33:08

GEOFF NIELSON

Like the tools are here. When, when can we fire them? What what's the best antidote to that? Like what's the what's the best response to help CIOs better understand or straight? Rather, CFOs better understand what developers actually do and where they're real value.

00:35:33:10 - 00:36:09:21

RORY RICHARDSON

I ask them if they use managed databases like a managed database like RDS. 70%. What a DBA does is super boring. I know because I was a DBA super boring, like patches and backups and failures. This is not information architecture. This is majorly boring stuff. Managed services like RDS do those things 70% right. And so my question, the CFO is like when you switch to your managed database, because everybody has managed at the base at somewhere, did you fire 70% of your DBA?

00:36:09:24 - 00:36:39:17

RORY RICHARDSON

And they were like, no. So you still have the same number of DBA. Is as you did in the past, and they're like, yeah, now what are they doing? They don't no, no, tell them what they're doing. Because what what happened with managing databases is, was a cognitive shift that these people that went to school and spent their lives in information architecture are free to do information architecture, in other words.

00:36:39:18 - 00:37:25:07

RORY RICHARDSON

And so what we saw was a democratization of data science on a massive scale and an accelerant to for analytics. Data is getting cleaner. Like information is more accessible. Insights are driving the company forward, not just, you know, a cost center that is like the tax that you pay for information. There was a shift in responsibilities. Once we gave graphing calculator to DBAs, we're going to see that same shift, within all of our job families, I think over the next two years, and what they actually do is probably going to change as well.

00:37:25:09 - 00:37:51:01

RORY RICHARDSON

Meaning you're going to not see things, see this area as, like just a cost center that you have to maintain old code have. We don't maintain the old code anymore. 70% of a developer's time is spent maintaining old code. If we were able to retire all of that, checked it and get 70% time back, what's going to happen?

00:37:51:03 - 00:38:22:01

RORY RICHARDSON

I don't think like we're going to be static and we'll just fire 70% of the developers that, because what we've seen in various technology innovations is that just doesn't happen. Just humans change, they evolve and they do something different, not stay static with the same demands on the business. There's been no evidence of it. People evolve.

00:38:22:03 - 00:38:47:25

GEOFF NIELSON

So I'm thinking I'm thinking about the technology itself. Rory. And, you know, it's like we talked about this already, and it's, you know, a truism that, like, the, like the the pace of this is just, like, completely out of control, right? Like it's, as you said, it's like week to week here. As that's happening, are you worried that, like, the adoption curve is falling farther and farther behind that?

00:38:48:01 - 00:39:06:11

GEOFF NIELSON

And by the way, I mean, I'll share, you know, my story a little bit, which is when I talk to business leaders around here, they tend to be like, oh, yeah, like, I seems to be this, you know, hot new thing. And in the past year it's gotten really good. Like, you know, in probably a year or two from now, it's going to do amazing things.

00:39:06:14 - 00:39:24:22

GEOFF NIELSON

And then when I talk to the CIOs and CTOs around here, they're like a year to two years. Are you kidding? Like this thing? It's weekly. Like it's like three months from now, we're going to be in a completely different world, right? And we're like struggling to stay on top of that. So I mean, first of all, are you seeing that as well?

00:39:24:29 - 00:39:36:13

GEOFF NIELSON

And second of all, like, what do we do about that, as you know, organizational leaders, but also as, you know, for, you know, technology organizations like Amazon.

00:39:36:16 - 00:40:02:18

RORY RICHARDSON

I recently saw, an analyst report, and I wish I could remember this guy's name. And so I can give him proper credit, but my brain is fried. Where it did an analysis by job family of the impact of, of, at serving people in different job families about the impact of of AI. And you're dead on.

00:40:02:18 - 00:40:42:23

RORY RICHARDSON

Right. Like the ones that thought that, that I was going to change their life the most were technologists. And it got me thinking about that a lot. And the I think the reason why it's disproportionate, my job, family, is that we saw the most stark, shift in, in the effectiveness of these tools with technologist was because I think most of us started with, code generation and, first, and there's a really good reason why we started with code generation.

00:40:42:23 - 00:41:15:08

RORY RICHARDSON

It's because code is really consistent. Right. There's no agitates, and it's highly structured language compared to English. Right. So applying large language models onto a corpus of code that is already very, very, very structured is is having exponential results. So I think it is easier for it to be real for the technologist and for them to see the impact.

00:41:15:11 - 00:41:54:05

RORY RICHARDSON

Because when you look at it, you know, the the earliest tools in 2023, like GitHub Copilot. And for us it was code Whisperer. They that's where it started. And I still think that workload is probably the absolutely most mature of tools that have incorporated generative AI natively than anything else. Because it was it was the first I think that's going to, in fact, and go viral across the other job families that just they haven't done it yet.

00:41:54:08 - 00:42:24:21

RORY RICHARDSON

I mean, I was talking to, a title company. I mean, it title companies basically just process contracts, right? And what they wanted to apply generative AI to to was we want to write contracts. And I was like, that's that's the family jewels. That's literally what you guys do. Why would you want to apply to the most the highest cognitive load and the most valuable humanistic thing that your company does instead?

00:42:24:22 - 00:42:51:08

RORY RICHARDSON

And why don't you apply it, you know, to, to to archiving, like being able to, read PDFs and search and index your treasure trove of data that you had in your previous contracts in order to, you know, learn, from different patterns that you had there. You see, that's pretty low risk, right? Because that hasn't been done before.

00:42:51:08 - 00:43:20:27

RORY RICHARDSON

And, you'd be able to analyze massive amounts of contracts, not create net new contracts. So I think where a lot of people get kind of the wrong end of the stick is they want to go to the like, the hardest, riskiest, sexiest thing in their life. And try to replace them. But where we're seeing the most success is when generative AI is applied to the luckiest, most boring parts of stuff you don't want to do anyway.

00:43:21:01 - 00:43:47:01

RORY RICHARDSON

Or that's repetitive, where, you know, foundational mistakes are made like and for whatever reason, like the other job families like outside of technologists are are are jumping to sort of the wrong conclusion of what they want to apply generative AI to first. And so it doesn't they're not having the same effect. So if there's any advice I would I would have for any job family outside of my technologist.

00:43:47:04 - 00:44:11:03

RORY RICHARDSON

Crazy brain is to get generative AI to make art that it's not really art them. Instead, you know, apply generative AI to all the stuff that you don't want to do so that you have more time to make art, that that's where we need to shift our understanding. We're not trying to replace humans. We're trying to accelerate and democratize.

00:44:11:06 - 00:44:19:29

RORY RICHARDSON

And that's a shift in mindset that we got to get other job families to understand. Outside of just the technologies.

00:44:20:01 - 00:44:35:06

GEOFF NIELSON

Right. And that was that. That was like, a real light bulb moment for me last time we talked to. Is that like, you know, people complain about like, oh, like AI is going to do all the creative stuff. It's like, well, then don't use it for the creative stuff. Use it for this stuff you don't want to do.

00:44:35:06 - 00:44:41:09

GEOFF NIELSON

And I was like, yeah, it is good at that. That's right. It's a great it's a great mindset. Yeah.

00:44:41:11 - 00:45:07:12

RORY RICHARDSON

They like, people ask me sociology questions all the time. It's like, what are you worried about? Or what are you concerned about? Well, I just don't think like that. And instead, you know, the class isn't half empty or half full. The class has four ounces. Okay. What you choose to do with those four ounces is kind of up to you with worrying about the potential of what's going to happen with those four ounces isn't particularly useful.

00:45:07:14 - 00:45:33:17

RORY RICHARDSON

But going. Four ounces. Well, it would be better if we had five, you know like use it as a tool. That's what, that's what technology is. These are all just tools and the fairly neutral until humans get involved. Right. Humans are the the the define you get vector. And what if I was a therapist or inches the social sciences I would I wouldn't be working for Amazon or in doing what I'm doing.

00:45:33:17 - 00:45:44:19

RORY RICHARDSON

So I'm probably not the best person to be qualified to have those discussions. But I'm more I'm the it's four ounces and this is what it can do and this is what it can't do. Kind of mindset.

00:45:44:22 - 00:45:49:02

GEOFF NIELSON

Right? Right. Spoken like a true engineer.

00:45:49:04 - 00:45:54:22

RORY RICHARDSON

I'm actually not an engineer. I think I was just born an engineer.

00:45:54:25 - 00:45:55:20

GEOFF NIELSON

Really?

00:45:55:23 - 00:45:56:17

RORY RICHARDSON

Yeah.

00:45:56:20 - 00:46:04:02

GEOFF NIELSON

I didn't know that about you. I thought, but you had a math background or how to know.

00:46:04:04 - 00:46:23:02

RORY RICHARDSON

Okay. Again, it was going to make me sound super old. I grew up in a really small town in Paris, Texas, in in Paris, Texas. You know, it was kind of late to the technology game. So by the time I went to college, I went to the University of Texas at Austin. And you, you got the course descriptions and it was a massive book.

00:46:23:03 - 00:46:48:14

RORY RICHARDSON

And for me, I was like a kid in Candyland. Oh, like, every day I was like, oh, anthropology. I'm going to study anthropology, or I'm going to study advanced chemistry because I love to learn. I was just that kid that I always just had an insatiable appetite for learning. So I think I graduated with literally twice as many hours as I needed for my degree because I just get taking.

00:46:48:14 - 00:46:49:10

RORY RICHARDSON

So of course I of that.

00:46:49:10 - 00:46:49:20

GEOFF NIELSON

Right?

00:46:49:21 - 00:47:13:00

RORY RICHARDSON

Yeah. Yeah. I just love learning, I don't I in my household, even though they were rednecks, I mean, my household just had an attitude that nothing was unknowable. And maybe it was because we, we just grew up so remote that we have a very can do attitude to literally everything. It's like, hey, the car broke down. Well, you should go figure out how you should go figure out how to fix car.

00:47:13:05 - 00:47:41:23

RORY RICHARDSON

Yeah. Or, you know, this is a computer you should go figure out how that works. It's just like in the I have a mental model that nothing is unknowable. Which means and I don't, I have a personal beef when I'm interviewing candidates, if I ever get a candidate says, well, I'm really not technical. Like, it's like kiss of Death, but for interviewing with me because I'm like, it's just you're not born technical.

00:47:41:23 - 00:47:42:05

RORY RICHARDSON

You're not.

00:47:42:06 - 00:47:44:21

GEOFF NIELSON

It is a lazy answer, right?

00:47:44:24 - 00:47:52:00

RORY RICHARDSON

It's not measurable either. Like it's like saying, well, I'm not literate.

00:47:52:02 - 00:47:52:27

GEOFF NIELSON

Yeah.

00:47:52:29 - 00:48:18:26

RORY RICHARDSON

What. That's something like there's just stuff, you know, and there's stuff you don't know yet. That's it. Those are the only two categories we're allowed in life. Yeah there is no. And I had the similar. And by the way, this rant does relate to generative AI because when people say like, oh, I don't know, that's that I'm not really, you know, or techie or I'm not really like that.

00:48:19:02 - 00:48:46:19

RORY RICHARDSON

That's not a thing. There's just stuff. We know what to do now, and there's stuff we're going to know how to do tomorrow. There's not a person that is one thing or another. You. This is just all of that. There are some things you're going to learn faster than others. Fine. But that's where the grit comes in. Like, if you need to know this thing, whether or not your brain works that way or not, and you need to frickin learn it.

00:48:46:21 - 00:48:55:06

RORY RICHARDSON

Like if you have an electrode for languages, great. If you don't and you've moved to another country, too bad you're gonna have work twice as hard, but you're still going to learn it.

00:48:55:08 - 00:48:56:01

GEOFF NIELSON

Yeah.

00:48:56:04 - 00:48:59:20

RORY RICHARDSON

Let's just. That's just human.

00:48:59:22 - 00:49:09:27

GEOFF NIELSON

Yeah. Well, and you know, with generative AI, it just seems like it's like it's less of an excuse than ever, right? Because it even takes less grit to answer a lot of these questions. Yeah.

00:49:09:29 - 00:49:17:19

RORY RICHARDSON

That, like the, that drives me absolutely crazy because.

00:49:17:22 - 00:49:22:17

RORY RICHARDSON

It's more about how fast you can learn. Not if it's. It's when and not if.

00:49:22:17 - 00:49:36:27

GEOFF NIELSON

Yeah. Well, that's just, that's just really resonates with me. And, you know, just a quick aside, you know, from my experience. So when I was in college, I actually used to be a guitar teacher. That was kind of like one of the ways I made my way through college. A great gig, by the way. Really good gig.

00:49:36:29 - 00:49:55:16

GEOFF NIELSON

But it was funny because you, you know, you have all these students and some people and I'm sure you've encountered that. Some people are. I'm not musical. I'm not. I'm not musical, I don't have yeah, I'm not musical. And some people like, didn't have that. And what it came down to when you, when you had students week after week is the ones who got good were the ones who practiced right.

00:49:55:16 - 00:50:13:19

GEOFF NIELSON

Like, yeah, like, forget what you like, you know, what mental model you had of yourself and what you can and can't do. Like it's grit, right? Like put in the time and you will get good and do some people maybe get good 10% faster, 10% slower maybe. But if you want to be good, keep going and show up.

00:50:13:26 - 00:50:15:28

GEOFF NIELSON

Exactly.

00:50:16:01 - 00:50:35:00

RORY RICHARDSON

You had no idea how much that resonates with me, because, I was told my entire life I was tone deaf. Like, that was a physical deficit. By the way, there is no such thing as tone deaf. No, I didn't, but, you know, you're told your entire like, you're tone deaf because you're like, hit this note, and you're like, or and it doesn't it.

00:50:35:02 - 00:50:57:00

RORY RICHARDSON

And so for whatever reason, I got a bird in my saddle that I wanted to learn violin when I was in college. Okay. I don't know, like, violins has no frets. So you are constantly tuning your violin, right? Which means you can't be tone deaf, right, in order to play the violin. So I sweet talk to my way into a college level violin course.

00:50:57:00 - 00:51:00:16

RORY RICHARDSON

I had never played the violin before. Bingo.

00:51:00:18 - 00:51:00:28

GEOFF NIELSON

Good for.

00:51:00:28 - 00:51:29:23

RORY RICHARDSON

You know, I'm just obstinate. Okay? It's like so I can in this class. And this professor is like, you're tone deaf. And I'm like, no, no. And so what he did was, is like, this is a pitch pipe. You've got to figure out how to do this. And I just kept trying until I finally got it. And then I got, I got the, I got the T 65 of the violin, which, by the way, I didn't know was a thing.

00:51:29:25 - 00:51:57:24

RORY RICHARDSON

And it's electronic tuner. You there's a thing with a graph and then you just match it and then you learn in the new and then you teach yourself how to hear different tones, because you have a graphical interface for if you're sharp or flat. And I was like. Wait, so everything I was told growing up about that you're a math person or you're not a math person or you're tone deaf or you're this is other.

00:51:57:27 - 00:52:17:18

RORY RICHARDSON

Yes it is. It's total B.S. we are ones of elastic clay that can literally do anything. And the idea that you were limited in your brain is absolute B.S. we were taught that as kids, but it's turns out it's not true at all.

00:52:17:21 - 00:52:34:25

GEOFF NIELSON

Hey, I wanted to say a big thank you for coming on today. This has been a really, really interesting conversation we like. I was going to say we covered a lot of ground, but even saying that doesn't cover the fact that, like, we worked in Pride and Prejudice and like idea that to a conversation that was supposed to be about, you know, Amazon Q and generative AI.

00:52:34:25 - 00:52:39:26

GEOFF NIELSON

But I had a really, really interesting time, lots of insights. And, yeah, I really appreciate it.

00:52:39:26 - 00:52:43:17

RORY RICHARDSON

It awesome. Thank you so much for having me. I always enjoy these conversations.