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( SPEAKER )
Hadi Hariri
Consultant
Independent
Hadi Hariri has spent over 35 years in software, as a developer, consultant, and leader.
He started out building custom software for businesses ranging from real estate firms to large print companies, automating how they worked and learning that most problems are business problems first. He later spent over a decade at tooling companies and software consultancies before joining JetBrains, where he stayed for nearly 17 years.
At JetBrains he started as a Developer Advocate, working with the .NET, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin communities. He built and led the developer advocacy team, created KotlinConf, helped grow the Kotlin community, and served as President of the Kotlin Foundation. Over time his work moved behind the scenes, into communications, crisis response, privacy, governance, cross-department programmes and, finally, operations as SVP.
He has been speaking for more than two decades, at events from Google I/O and Devoxx to Gartner and Microsoft conferences. He has created courses for O'Reilly and Pluralsight, hosted a podcast, and wrote Public Speaking Tips.
Session
The Tool Won't Decide For You: Why AI Won't Fix What's Actually Broken
Can't agree on priorities? Add a tool. Communication problems? Add another tool to the ten you already have.
For decades our industry has believed that the right tool will fix problems that are really about people, decisions and accountability. AI has made that belief stronger than ever. We can now produce plans, strategies and code faster than ever before. But faster output isn't the same as value, and a 16-page strategy document isn't the same as a decision.
In this talk I'll look at why we keep reaching for tools when the real problem is human: unclear priorities, avoided decisions, missing ownership, poor communication. I'll look at what AI changes and what it doesn't, and why the hardest parts of building software were never the typing. Judgment, trade-offs, owning a hard call. None of that goes away because a model can write the first draft.
This isn't an anti-AI talk. I use it every day. It's a talk about where the real work is, and why teams that understand that will get far more out of AI than those who hope it will do the thinking for them.
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