Technology

Stupid question but what is stopping the software engineers to poison the well?

Great question. I agree with other responses - it happens, and there's motive to hush it up, so we tend not to hear about it.

It's also just really hard to tell the difference after the fact between "Dave sabotaged us" and "no one knows how to do what Dave did".

But I'll add - there's currently little need motive sabotage AI implementations. Current generation AI is largely unable to deliver on what is promised, in a business sense. It does cool but useless things, like quickly generating low maturity code, and writing a summary any seven year old could have wtitten.

Current generation AI adds very little business value, while creating substantial risks. Nevermind that no one knows how Dave worked, now no one knows how our AI works, and it's so eager to please everyone that it lies at critical moments.

Companies playing around with current generation AI to boost next quarter's stocks will hit plenty of "find out" soon enough, with nothing beyond the natural consequences of ignoring their own engineers advice.

All that to say - if we see what looks like sabotage, it may well just be the natural consequences of stupidity.