Techstrong Gang – February 5, 2025

Hey everyone. It's about time that a government has the gumption to say we're not gonna accept unacceptable risk with ai. You're watching Textron Gang.

Hi everyone. Alan Shimel here. Happy Wednesday.

We have a good Textron gang for you today. I can't wait to jump into it. Let me introduce you to our gang line up for today.

First of all, I guess we'll go to our couple of high rollers out in Las Vegas. Um, seven, right, uh, seven. Pulled them both by the ear away from the crab tables.

First we have our future, uh, VP DevOps analyst, Mitch Ashley. Hey, Mitchell, it's good to see you. It's good to see you from, uh, you know, with my partner in crime, Mike here in Vegas.

We're having a good time, kind of our own version of Ocean's three and a half. Um, yes, more or less about two and a half. Yeah.

Yeah. And joining Mitch in Vegas, as we said, is our Chief Content Officer. I heard he, I heard he was spotted at the sports book, making a bet on the Yankees winning the World Series this year.

I, I, you didn't, you don't wanna say what the odds are on that. Where, where they, Mike, I, I don't know what the odds are on that. I'm gonna have to look that up because truth be told, I've reached that age where I was in bed at nine o'clock last night.

So there you go. Well, that's 'cause you gotta get up early for today. Welcome, and thanks for joining us from Vegas.

We're gonna go even further west out to Silicon Valley for our, uh, marketing pro extraordinaire and host, uh, Lisa Martin. Hey, Lisa, how are you? And great to see you.

Doing well. Excited to dig into today's topics. Yeah, we got some juicy stuff to go into, so thanks for coming on.

And then joining Lisa and Mike. And Mitch is our, uh, well, I forgot her new title now. Is it Managing Editor for Techstrong?

That sound right? Senior managing editor for All of Tech, senior managing editor for All of Techstrong, uh, publications. Is publications still the right word?

Yeah, why not? Media Outlets, our owned AM outlets. Okay.

Amanda Razani. Hey, Amanda, how are you? Hello.

Good. So congratulations on this new title and role, though. Truth be told.

It's a job you've been doing, I guess real much now, but, uh, congratulations and couldn't come. Couldn't a, a nicer person. Couldn't have had it.

So good for You. Aw, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

All righty. Okay, let's jump into things, Mike. It looks like the EU look, at least we have one government entity in the world that grew a set, but, um, Mike, you want to talk to us about what the EU has has done here?

Yeah, So the EU has said that they are starting to ban AI systems that they perceive have an unacceptable risk. And when you look into what they're talking about, it seems like it's very much driven on, uh, the impact it might have on people. So they're going after things like, you know, if you're targeting a particular demographic with some negative content, or if you are trying to manipulate folks in a marketing e-commerce kind of fashion.

Um, it, it seems like it's the tip of the iceberg to me. But Lisa, I know you looked at this and I'm sure marketers are looking at this as well, but what is your take on how broad is this? Is this a signal of intent or is this something we should all kind of take a little more seriously starting tomorrow?

I think we should all take it, start taking it more seriously. So we've talked about the eu, um, ban on AI systems before on Textron Gang. Well enforcement went into effect a couple of days ago on Sunday, February 2nd, ironically, Groundhog Day.

8 million or 7% of global annual revenue from the previous fiscal year. GDPR is about 4% of annual global turnover. And what we're seeing is they really dug into the, as you said, Mike, those systems that are deemed unacceptable.

For example, those that are attempting to profile people. Um, you said demographics like people with disabilities or the underaged or predict people might be committing crimes based on appearance. So I think we're gonna be learning a lot from them as they really tighten, uh, the purse strings here on what is deemed unacceptable.

We also heard from a number of tech companies, um, Amazon, Google OpenAI, they've all signed a PAC that yes, we will comply. We didn't hear that from Meta or Apple, but I think from a marketing perspective, organizations are gonna have to get really crisp and clear on what their AI systems are doing, how they're using data, um, that is acceptable to the eu. And I think we're, we're seeing again, the EU lead, the charge share call.

Obviously we don't have that in the us so it's gonna be an interesting time to see which AI systems start to fall into this category in which things we might start to see shut down. I mean, I, I looked at it and to me this, you know, this is a, this is some legislation that can be used. I mean, they gave themselves enough rope to use it in a variety of ways.

I think one of the ways may be that if you've developed some open source AI system that you're offering is SaaS and hosting it in some country that they deem is not reliable or a security risk, that's an unacceptable risk. And you may see them say something like, deep seek is poses. Deep seek SaaS hosted in China poses an unacceptable risk to EU citizens.

I think that's one way this could go. And I think under, from what I read about how this legislation's written, that's perfectly within its purview. I think another way I thought about too is if some, you know, I'm not going to say a bad word.

If some president over here wanted to raise some tariffs on the eu right, or on EU technology or something, I think it gives the EU latitude to say, you know what? Ai, US AI based systems, unacceptable risk, stay out. Well, That's exactly what happened to Apple.

I mean, it was because of the EU AI act that they said we're not gonna introduce, uh, intelligence, apple intelligence onto a phone being used in the eu. So there's kind of multiple ways this goes, right? There's definitely replications if they find you in violation of something.

And I think it was the end of the year, the, the office of AI or some something like that came out with some more definition around what does it mean? What do, what do you have to do if you're in the, in one of these companies creating AI or generative AI systems? Um, and, and it's still very vague language.

It's still things on risk assessment and making sure we, that you could publish what you've done to try to make them safe. These are always cascading things, right? It's not the initial act that happens.

It's what the interpretation of it is over time. And sometimes it's adjudicated. So, but it's interesting to me that it did have a consequence of already of Apple backing out, saying, not until this shakes out, we're not gonna be your poster child for violating your, your regulation.

Yeah. And I think Apple always holds back on a lot of things too. There, there seem to be the last, um, even with ai, uh, entering into the AI race, it seems like Great point.

Yeah. So how far can we take this though? I mean, let's assume that we're meta for a minute.

Meta uses AI to help manipulate its algorithms to market stuff. So will the EU look at meta and say, um, you know, that's a violation of this policy because you are manipulating content in a way to create junkies consuming handgun material or whatever it might be. So Lisa, you know, how far can we go?

I think it can actually go pretty far. I think as, as, uh, Alan, you and Mitch have said there's a lot of latitude here with what the EU has put in place for this first foray of fines with the unacceptable risk. Um, I think there's a number of other things that can be looked at.

Like I was, you know, looking at people predicting people that are committing crimes or using biometrics to infer a person's characteristics, um, like sexual orientation, for example. So I think there's leeway here that the EU can use against companies like meta and say, we don't like the way that your algorithms are working. There's biases there that we prohibit.

So it, it's gonna be interesting to see who starts to fall victim here and where, which way that latitude or maybe think of it kind of like as a pendulum, which way it swings in terms of enforcement. Yeah, Lisa, I think you nailed it. AI is the next algorithm in terms of being in the crosshairs of regulatory bodies.

This is a way of going after algorithms and now are not just reinforced, but actually our AI are becoming AI very quickly. So I I, I think that's the, the ripe field that's gonna be plowed many times by regulators of going after companies around their algorithms. Now they'll call it ai 'cause that's scarier.

And uh, people are already a little bit freaked out, maybe very freaked out about that. So it gives, I think it gives them a lot more than latitude. Alan, I think it gives 'em carte blanche to go after tech companies when they see something they don't like, You know, wait, what's that?

I hear a whale of despair from all the EU citizens who have missed out on apple intelligence. One or nothing. I Hear all the way here in Vegas.

We hear it. We hear it. There's mean wonder for Apple intelligence has kind of turned out to be so far.

So Lan, are we likely to see variations of this legislation in all the states, assuming the national government is not gonna be Able to do anything you're talking about here in the US Come I, I'm talking about here In the, and I get 50 versions of this law in the United States. You're not going to, first of all, you wouldn't get 50 versions. 'cause 35, our states stick their head in the sand about this.

They have bigger things to fry about whether people are dressing up or what bathrooms they go to. But here's the key. Don't underestimate the political latitude that this act gives them as well.

You are talking about them taking actions against specific companies. I'm telling you, this will be wielded as a nation state tool, right? If in, in the event of tariffs, trade wars, global competition, right?

You, you, this is the world we we're heading into, the balkanization of the world. This is pre-World War I kind of all over again where you have a multipolar world, the EU is a power and, and they're a power that has political will to act. And that's where I, that's where I think this is really gonna be used.

They may paper it over and say, no, it's just deep seek not the Chinese ai or it's just meta or apple, not US ai. But there, there's, there's a political element to this that if we don't acknowledge we're getting ourselves That's a great point. There's a definite political angle, Scary point too.

And if you lay, if you kind of open the landscape a little bit further, you have the changes to the product liability laws that EU has enacted that go in effect in a year, that expand, expand product liability into software much more greatly into software and also some, to some degree online service providers. So now combine that with ai, right? There's another way to violate any of those kind of things.

That's why I think that's why I think it's, it is just an open, open field day for regulators. Regulators and, and, uh, people from now in the product liability side of this to go after companies. So this could turn into, uh, you know, big can, you know what, Yeah.

I mean, Mike, to your point though, seriously, you might see the, a handful of states that enact similar sort of legislation, the usual suspects, California, New York, or of a certain political persuasion, perhaps. Uh, unless, unless some crazy governor down here decides that this is somehow related to wokeness or something, then, then they'll do something. We love to do stuff around wokeness here, but short of that, you know, the, the US is not, is not the place for, you know, cutting edge legislation enforcement on technology, Right?

So Lisa, will it become more expensive to market globally? 'cause I'm gonna have to navigate all these laws, or will I just kind of follow the most stringent and assume that I'm good everywhere else? That's a really great point there in terms of cost.

You know, I think the timing was interesting with the law going into effect for unacceptable risk on Sunday, right? On the heels of deep seek ai and that rattled nerves and rattled, um, the stock market. 5.

I think from a cost perspective organizations, you're gonna have to really get very clear and crisp in their messaging to understand exactly how they're using data and the algorithms to target target audiences with key messages. Um, I think it'll be, it's something that we'll have to see in terms of cost, but I think from from messaging perspective, that has to get much more crisp. And that should be data and information that marketing organizations already have to be able to map against what this unacceptable risk is calling out to ensure that how they're describing how their systems work doesn't fall into that category.

I'm curious if unacceptable risk also, um, it spans into what we talked about on the last show. Our phones, our TVs, everything with AI is listening to us. And we mentioned boots and suddenly there's boot ads on the TV on our phone.

It's so weird. And so I wonder if that's gonna be deemed unacceptable moving forward, or if that's still gonna be just fine. That's a good point too.

'cause it's still common. Yes. You search for one thing and it, and it tops up all over your social, like you said, your tv, um, all devices are listening.

They're sharing information from other nearby devices in terms of that are sharing wifi. So is that unacceptable? It doesn't sound like it's to me right now, based on the way that they've defined what the unacceptable risk categories are.

But to your point and what Amanda and what we've been talking about, there's latitude here. So will that eventually become unacceptable? It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Alan, to your point though, this, can this not cut two ways, will not, some possibly conservative states or some other countries determine that, wow, what an awesome mechanism for censoring here. And they'll determine that text on gang is an unacceptable risk in a away we go. Well, yeah.

You know, Mike, there's two things that are pour a vacuum nature and EU regulatory bodies. So we'll See this. No, I'm, I'm, you know, like I can't wait to be Jake and Elwood, you know, the Boos brothers banned in two states, three states, whatever, you know.

There we go. Got both kinds of sunglasses and hate. Hey bud, I'm sensing another theme here for the next Textron.

Good for you. You gonna be for next year's? Dick Mitchell and I, Jake and Elwood, Back to my college band days, we had a, we had a Blues brothers band.

Yeah, we could, we could do that. We could definitely do that. Um, anyway, hey, I think we're gonna take a break here on the gang for today.

Let's come back and talk about something else. You know, AI can do good too. It's not all unacceptable risk.

We're gonna talk about. Can AI help us, uh, identify or eliminate, I don't know, about eliminate robocalls? The SC of robocalls.

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Contact us today and tell your story to the world in the most powerful way with Textron Group. All right, to Alan's point, yes, it's true. AI can do good.

And one example is this thing called hia. It's an app that sits on your phone and I guess it listens to the incoming call and identifies it, whether it's a robocall or some other scam and kinda reroutes it and answers it and actually inquires as to what is the nature of your business with you before you even get involved with this thing. So I guess it's kinda like having your own personal AI secretary, which could be a good thing.

And personally, what I kind of like most about this thing is we have found a technological solution maybe to something we've been trying to legislate and well, we all know how good legislation actually works. So Amanda, what's your take here? I know you've had some fun lately with the phone calls and stuff.

So as you look at this, what's your reaction? Well, I think we can all agree that we are getting more and more scams to our phones. I'm filtering through daily scams, uh, on my phone text messages that I'm certain are scams, so I don't click on them.

Uh, calls that are lots of robocalls. Um, we're just waiting to finish finalizing your loan and we just need, oh my goodness, the scams are getting better and better and they sound so authentic and they come from authentic numbers sometimes. So that's really scary.

Um, so I per for one would appreciate this toll. I would, I would definitely utilize it because they're just getting so good at these scams. I would love to not pick up the phone and, and hear, um, uh, it was my son the other day, he answered the phone and he didn't realize that it was ai, but it was one of those robocall asking for donations for the, the police force.

Maybe I think it was, um, or the firefighters organization. But it was, it was, um, automated and he would answer and they would answer back. And finally I told him, hang up.

Wow, That's, so he finally hung up, but he, it was a real guy, uh, talking to him and responding. And I had to tell him, that was not a real guy. That was a scam.

Or it's an automated call. I don't know. I don't trust any of those anymore.

Hey, I, I need to break in, Alan. I just, the, the spa texted me when to confirm your one 30 spa appointment today for nails and Medicare insec. Yes.

And, And, and they, and they have a $5 million loan available to me at low low rates. So, so, but seriously, Lisa, are we on the cusp maybe of putting an end to robo calling, cold calling as a method of marketing? 'cause the tech was eventually catching up with this.

You know, there is, IA also has a solution called Branded Call for marketers to be able to get noticed by customers to come across branded as legitimate, because that's one of the biggest challenges that marketers have is, is as Amanda pointed out, the sophistication of these robocalls and the deep fakes are getting so good. It's really hard to distinguish a lot of times. And so maybe the last second before you're scammed out of money.

And that's what, um, uh, there was a survey that Haya did with, uh, who was it here? I've got it in my notes somewhere, uh, census wide that found that, um, 45% of people targeted fall victim and end up spending an average of $7,200 on this. But marketers can obviously trust is currency with customers.

So marketers can use HIAs branded call platform to ensure that their calls are legitimately, uh, displayed to consumers so that the chances of consumers falling victim to, um, anything from that company goes down. So it's gonna be interesting to see how marketers should respond here, but it's incredibly important because nobody wants to have to rebuild a brand once brand is damaged. And really it's all about ensuring that there's trust between a brand and its consumers or its business customers.

And that's what one of the things that Haya can do here is to help, uh, brands maintain that legitimacy and that trust to their constituents. I think it will also help reduce, um, manipulation of society, especially when it comes to government issues, because I get a lot of those scam text messages and calls robocalls too, you know, answer this survey or, you know, respond to this issue. You know, so and so says that they want you to vote this way.

All kinds of craziness. So am I the only one? I will not answer an inbound call from a number I don't recognize same or lawsuit.

I've Also, my, my, my wife's like that too, And I've also noticed that, um, and I didn't do it consciously, but now I, I text my friends to tell them I'm gonna call them so they know it's me. For sure. Do you do that, Mike?

Yep. Like, yep. Wow.

Because then You just left them a slack message. They probably answer, but you know, no, they don't. What you Actually, my friends aren't On Slack.

Did you say Slack and Mike in the same sentence? Yeah, I guess they know it wasn't Mike then. Yeah, there you go.

I would say if I get a Slack message from somebody's purporting to be Mike Vizard, I immediately put that into my spam. It's a tea fake. It's a deep fake.

I know. It, it's a, it's a good point of like, do you trust anything? Right?

I don't trust any text messages coming over unless I know I did something to cause it to come to me. Or even if it is the, you know, the spa the doctor's appointment. As long as I know I've got one, you know, how many times do you get weird things?

It's like, it sounds like it could be true. And I don't know how, I don't know why. Um, who is it?

PayPal keeps updating their terms and agreements about every three days. I can another, another fake email. It just, you can't tell it's difficult.

You bring up a great point, Mitch, about the legitimacy. You talk, you mentioned like, I get these BLE calls from like my doctor reminding me of an appointment or a pharmacy reminding me of a prescription that's ready for pickup. So brands have to be really careful and HIA is a great source for them to make sure that really, um, opt-in offers and opt-out, uh, options rather are available, but they have to work to legitimize themselves so that there's value delivered when it makes sense.

Like, for example, a doctor's appointment reminder or pharmacy, like I said, um, or something from your bank, for example. Although that that can kind of be on the blurry lines there. But the legitimacy has to be verified and brands need that.

So that, whether it's a, a hospital organization or a consumer brand to ensure that their customers are being delivered the right message at the right time in a legitimate way that doesn't cause harm or doesn't, you know, gonna cause somebody to, to fall victim to a scam and pay $7,000. I think there's a whole market of, especially for the, go ahead, Amanda. Go ahead.

Oh, I was just gonna say, especially for the elderly, they are the ones who fall victim a lot definitely to these rowboat calls and yes, because they've gotten so good, it's, it's so hard for them to, to realize that it's fake. Yeah. Well you actually, my Mom gets a ton of these every day.

You're talking about my father-in-law's favorite hobby as he loves these calls and he just sits there and he like shines to stretch them out as long as he can to kind of, it's his way of resistance and annoyance. And he kind of like, just goes round and round in a circle and, you know, I'm sure the other person, if there's a real person on the other side, doesn't really understand or care that, you know, but to him it's, that's his daily entertainment these days. I, I like to, I'll, I confess I like to do that too once in a while.

Much why sort my, my bank account, how do I get my bank account number to you? How would I do that? Let him go through the whole thing, Just so my husband does that a lot and he'll take on accents too and he'll just have so much fun with it.

Yeah, I don't know. I, it's, But Amanda brings up a great Point, I realize, but I'm sorry, what? Liz, sorry, Alan.

Amanda, you bring up a great point about the elderly. Now we have to, um, consider all the different generations that are alive today and using technology. I was saying my mom gets a ton of these calls.

I don't get as many. I had, I had a morning the other day where I was getting tons of them and they all come in from my area code. Um, and so I, an area code I recognize, but I just think, I don't know this number, I'm not expecting any calls, but we have to be really careful of folks that are, gullible is not the right word, susceptible to believing because why would they, why would somebody do harm through a, a phone call or a text message?

So that's a, a concern for that, that age group of those generations that are potentially victims. And I was wondering in that data that I mentioned, that survey that census y did with, um, with hia, um, and some of the staff, so if I can find my notes here, um, 45% of those targeted for report falling victim, and they, it didn't say age group, but that was one thing that popped into my mind, Amanda, that you bring up a great point there about those generations that It's important. Great application for AI agents to, uh, you know, let's stick our a AI agent on all those text messages, figure out what's real, what's not.

Yeah, maybe it, maybe it entertains itself talking to the rep on the phone. Well, it, it phones, its, you know, it makes itself better. Right?

By by, by doing that anyway. Do, wait, wait, do the telecom people have a vested interest here, here are, because it seems like they're making money on the services they provide to the people who are generating these robocalls. So, um, you know, might time be to short some of those stocks because well then volume of calls is gonna drop Maybe, you know, there's always, there's think that's a likelihood's, always another scam.

These look, AI is the latest technology that they've sucked into it, but robocalls and fraud and con men and flimflam artists, heck, I'm even get elected president, you know, it's been going on a long time. Yeah, Grifters. And I think the sophistication will continue to rise.

Yeah. All righty, let's take a break here on Textron gang. We'll come back and we're gonna talk about closing the software development gap.

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Home of security bloggers network. All right, folks, we're back into close out. The mystery that Alan started with, here's a report out from Broadcom and they were serving people and asking them about, well, how closely aligned is your application development team with your product team?

Because the product teams are more dependent upon software engineering than ever. And it may not come as a surprise, but there's a huge gap still. And it's been around for a while.

And Mitch, I'd love to get your insights here because it doesn't seem to be closing despite all our efforts. So what's going on here? How do we make it better?

Well, this, this particular survey, you know, talked about value stream management and the potentially of that helping close that gap. I think it was about two thirds of folks said that there was a, they saw a disconnect between the business strategy and software development, which to your point, that's been an age old problem, right? And, and there have some, been some things that have helped us and, you know, things like Agile and DevOps that try to, to attempt to help close some of that gap, whether it's a technology solution or not.

Um, I'm not sure that that's necessarily the, the right answer, nor necessarily is value stream management that comes out of lean, lean manufacturing. And, um, the, the challenge with value stream management is it has a whole kind of body of, I don't know if I wanna call it science, but, uh, theory behind value streams and what activities trade value and what, what don't. And you can kinda run down that rabbit trail of what that means.

And sometimes that's not productive for organizations. I think the real, the real essence is, are people aligned with, with their work and the outcome that the business is required? And you can point to, whether it's communications and collaboration between organizations and people.

Is it, uh, compensation goals, alignments? Is it better measurement and instrumentation of what we're producing out of software and software delivery? I think that's a combination of all those things.

And maybe value stream management can help, uh, with that, though it hasn't proven out to be a, you know, wildly successful sector of the market in all honestly. I mean, it, it, it, it, it had a, it had a moment I think, and you know, and they, we, and now people call it flow more than value stream manager, right? They talk about flow.

And, and I think that's a good way of describing it. They talk about the flow of, of how software gets done, of how product gets done, excuse me, of how teams work together. To me though, Mitch, this has always been a case of, you know, as Beaufort, justice would say, a failure to communicate, right?

And, and that's at the nitty gritty of it. Mitch. You know, I, I'll go back to when you or I, it's where it's still secure.

And we knew what we needed in vam, right? We needed subgroups of, of groups. 'cause we used to group devices by groups.

And then we needed subgroups that we would define on the fly based upon some at attribute that would, you know, allow us to group those 'cause they needed some special remediation or handling or something. And we knew all of our customers told us this was something we needed. And, um, they're all requesting it.

We put it into the next release. 'cause back then we only did a release or two a year and the engineering team went off and, and, and did it. And they came back with something that wasn't really what we, you know, didn't really solve the problem that the customers had identified.

And now it was back to the drawing board, which meant another six to eight months before we'd actually see it, you know, in product. And, uh, you remember Mitch, it was, it was In the, the works of, uh, Ronald Reagan. There you go again.

Running Engine. That was So, so Lisa, I'd love to ask you a question about this. 'cause Berry in the report is the software engineering teams are saying that the big part of the problem is, is the product teams just keep changing their damn minds about what they want.

So why is that the case? And and is it just the requirements documents are a mess? 'cause the product people are kind of Moving, it's moving the goalpost, Moving the goalpost.

You know, Alan, you kind of nailed it when you said it. This is all about communication and I kind of think, oh, marketing can be a catalyst here for communication. Because ultimately it, what product teams have to have to balance is, um, features.

Are they technologically possible? Do they align with business goals and do they meet customer needs? And interestingly, the survey pointed out, and I wrote some stats down top metrics being employed to justify ROI in values stream management.

And these are all things marketing's gonna really care about. 67% of the survey respondents said customer happiness, 59% said increased sales and 53% said better customer support. So the key there is really ensuring that the product folks are communicating properly, getting the customer data and the feedback and the telemetry to understand how are customers using our technologies, what features should we be prioritizing?

And then figuring out a way to communicate that effectively. And maybe that's part of how the marketing could be the facilitator of those communications to ensure that the teams are taking the right constituents feedback into consideration so that things are much more streamlined and, and maybe predictable if you will, in terms of developments of nobody's going rogue. Uh, and that's probably pie in the sky, but I think marketing could be a facilitator of that.

I think that's, I think that's part of the answer, Lisa. It's also kind of moving away from, Alan mentioned flow, which is the term that people use for VSM now. It, it's, it's recognizing that software creation is a process and things change from the beginning to the end.

Part of the what Alan, you were, I made light of, but what Alan was describing is, well, what we asked for is not what we got was 'cause a lot of things happened in between could have been miscommunication, not people not understanding. It could just be compromises that had to be made along the way and engineering made them 'cause nobody else would or 'cause they had to, to meet the data or whatever it is. But it's, you know, in, in theory the things around shorter release cycles, you know, uh, smaller feedback cycles, feedback loops and agile and things like that are all there to help with that.

But I think it's, it's kind of moving but also moving away from the idea of a static product requirements document, right? Hopefully that thing has changed by the time we've released it. 'cause I'll bet the software's not gonna be what it was described originally in that document.

At least I've never seen that happen. It just, things change and evolve. Especially the longer it takes, the more things will change in terms of requirements.

That's always been my experience. 'cause the world moves on. It's just that's the world we live in.

So make the process of fluid one and make sure everybody gets communicate or is in that line of communication of what's happening and why we're changing what the effects are. Always say communication is the root of everything. It's One of the things I have learned the hard way is that, um, I'll sit in a room with somebody and say, this is this awesome capability we need.

And the IT folks will be like, yeah, that sounds great and we all agree that this is gonna be a thing we're gonna do. And I've learned to ask this question at the end of all those meetings. I always go, so, um, how many other things are you working on?

And or, and in your mind how many of those are more important than what we just discussed? 'cause that tells me whether my thing is actually gonna get made or not. 'cause there's only so many resources that the IT people have to go build something.

And if they're spending 99% of their time on 12 other things that are more important than my number 13 thing, I'm never gonna see it. And I don't know if the product people understand that that's part of the equation. Mitch, I think that's a great point.

I just wrote a, an analyst note about this of AI's impact on development decreased according to the, the Dora reports, the stability of releases. And I think one, the, one of the major factors is it's one more thing and that takes some experimentation and learning while you're working with AI tools and software, by the way, you're also at the same time doing observability and development. You're moving to cloud native, you're modernizing, you know, the list goes on.

It's all those other priorities too. And, and something's gotta give. You can't add just more to the, to the barrel and expect the same amount of output of what you expected at the beginning.

I don't, don't disagree with that either. I, I, you know, so quite frankly, I really thought this was a problem that DevOps was gonna tackle, right? That because at the end of the day, DevOps is about much better communication.

It is about bringing these different roles onto one team, a, a cross-functional team so that we'd have better alignment across. Um, and then, you know, just on the way to the, to the movie theater, you know, value stream management came out and said, oh no, this is something we do. And, and that tried to jump on it.

And you know, other people said, well let's build a platform that'll keep you on the guardrails and this way that'll make it work. Everybody tries to put their like 2 cents in here with some magic bullet, you know, and magic pixie dust when really at, at the heart, it is an alignment of, of, of communication with an alignment of vision. And you know, IIII don't know, like I don't think AI has a magic bullet to fix this either though.

I'm sure we'll see one, but I don't know if we ever really, really fix this, unfortunately. Yeah, I'm trying to remember that old Paul Newman movie where he, there's a line in there about what we have here is a failure to communicate. I forget Which that it was Beaufort Justice, sheriff Justice the court man, and it was uh, carry the Big Stick.

He had the big stick. Uh, no. Well now That, that's a different movie.

This is Paul Newman and he's in jail and there he's escaped. And I know the one you're talking about, that's Beaufort T Ser I think or Whatever his name. Buser, right?

Not Justice. Yeah, justice is in Smokey in the Bandit. Just in case you guys wanted to do a little movie and trivia, what the happen we're, we're all over it, right?

Um, anyone out there who can guess the movie Mike's talking about, put it on a, a comment on whatever platform you're watching it on and you could win a text drunk t-shirt, uh, Paul Newman in jail. Cool hand. Luke is type a t-shirt.

Ding Ding Mitch want the t-shirt? Mitch, tell the truth. You didn't ask AI for that, did you?

While we were waiting? I can't, I can't even spell Chad. GPTI don't know what you're talking about All, alright, all right.

Just checking. Otherwise I was gonna have to de that an unacceptable risk and find the heck outta you. Um, 7% of my, of my revenue goes to you.

Uhhuh craziness. Anyway guys, it's been a great tech drunk gang, but all good things once come to an end. We've got a lot more on Tech drunk TV today, Mike and Mitch.

I know you're, you're busy out in Vegas there at the Dynatrace event, so keep us posted and we'll get an update on some of our sites through that, Amanda and Lisa, it is always great having you on. We'll see you on a future gang episode For now though, this Alan Shimel for Textron Group. Hope you've enjoyed today's text on gang.

Stay tuned for text on tv. We're coming at you, but we're outta here.