AI makes it easier to build almost anything. So why does that make the job harder?

In this episode, Matt sits down with Font Awesome founder Dave Gandy and engineer Travis Chase to get past the hype and into the real day-to-day of building with AI. The conversation covers what's actually changing on the team, where AI falls short, and what human skills matter more now than they did before.

If you're a designer, developer, or anyone trying to figure out where you fit in a world where your output can suddenly go 10x — this one's worth your time. Dave and Travis don't pretend the answers are simple. They also don't pretend the concerns aren't real.

Fair warning: Dave also makes a case for revisiting waterfall development. It's more convincing than it has any right to be.

What We Cover

• Why producing more means your quality bar has to get sharper, not looser
• The discernment problem — when you can build anything, how do you decide what's worth building?
• Why saying no is now a more important skill than ever
• The strongest AI concerns Dave and Travis actually take seriously (energy, training data ethics, governance)
• Why AI seems to help people become more of who they already are
• How to stay curious and useful during a major technology transition without chasing every squirrel

Timestamps

• 0:00 Cold open — from low-level to strategy
• 0:38 Intro
• 1:30 Where AI falls short right now
• 2:00 Quality control when output explodes
• 2:30 Taste, responsibility, and Jory's point at the snuggle
• 3:00 The discernment problem and snacktivities
• 4:20 Simplicity means saying no more than yes
• 5:30 Chasing waterfalls — does waterfall development make a comeback?
• 6:00 The strongest anti-AI arguments worth taking seriously
• 6:45 Energy, ethics, and training data consent
• 8:00 Technology's evolution and the genie that's out of the bottle
• 9:00 The Industrial Revolution farmer analogy
• 9:45 Superheroes, supervillains, and hiring for character first
• 10:20 Two ditches: navigating between idealism and cynicism
• 11:10 Rev share and what the world should look like
• 11:45 Governance, compromise, and garbage design
• 13:30 Washing machines and making more clean water
• 14:00 Guiding principles for using AI internally
• 15:00 Company behaviors as an AI framework: curious, humble, adventurous
• 16:00 AI helps people become more of who they are
• 16:45 AI will ask people to operate at a higher level
• 18:00 Refusing to engage is the riskiest move of all
• 19:00 We need critical voices — and we need them in the room
• 20:00 Echo chambers, bad data, and the water story
• 21:30 The world is hopeful — spend your life in wonder
• 22:30 Home prices, colonizing planets, and the leap to the real world
• 23:00 Outro

Credits

• Hosted by Matt Johnson
• Featuring Dave Gandy and Travis Chase
• Produced and edited by Matt Johnson
• Theme song by Ronnie Martin
• Music interstitials by Zach Malm
• Video editing by Isaac Chase

🔗 Font Awesome: https://fontawesome.com 

🔗 Check out episode one of the conversation! https://www.podcastawesome.com/2092855/episodes/19065993-build-week-what-we-made-part-1-with-dave-travis

🔗 Podcast Awesome: https://podcastawesome.com

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