How AI Is Transforming Software Development

Artificial intelligence isn't new — Siri has been answering questions for over a decade. What's changing is the scale of what's coming: the kind of shift that lands once or twice a generation, like the Internet, like the smartphone.

In late August 2023, I joined a panel of leaders at the inaugural Rally: Global Cross-Sector Innovation Conference at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis — three days built by founding partner Elevate Ventures to bring companies, universities, entrepreneurs, and investors together, with more than 200 speakers across six innovation studios, Software among them.

The Panel

The session's own framing put it plainly: AI is expected to explode in the years ahead and have as much impact as the advent of the Internet and smartphones. No one can predict every implication — but it's easy to anticipate immense change for business, consumers, and society. The panel's job was to talk about what that means on the ground, starting with the craft I know best: writing software.

What I Told the Room

AI is transforming software development the way every prior abstraction did — by moving the work up. The developer's job isn't disappearing; it's shifting from writing every line to directing what gets written, and from fixing bugs to designing systems where bugs are less likely to exist.

The teams that win won't be the ones with the best tools. They'll be the ones that rethink what a developer does, what a spec means, and what "done" looks like. That reframe is the real transformation. The code is the easy part.

More Context

The conference press release is linked below for the full context on the event. The session itself wasn't recorded for public release.

Rally Global Cross-Sector Innovation Conference — press release ↗
Rally conference promo video ↗

Think this argument fits your event? Tell me about the room — the calendar is selective.