The End of Specialization? How AI Shapes Modern Dev Teams | Vercel’s Lee Robinson

**Andrew Zigler** (0:06)
Welcome to Dev Interrupted. I'm your host, Andrew Zigler.

**Ben Lloyd Pearson** (0:09)
And I'm your host, Ben Lloyd Pearson.

**Andrew Zigler** (0:11)
This week, we have the scoop on another AI mandate, making waves in the industry, and a new competitor in the language learning space, along with some major restructuring and workforce changes at some pretty recognizable tech companies. But Ben, I'd say our first story, well, maybe it's more like a social story, not a news story. What's going on with you?

**Ben Lloyd Pearson** (0:31)
Yeah, I wonder if it's a representation of things to come. So I had a post on LinkedIn about fake accounts on the platform, and it attracted an AI bot that I interacted with. It was actually kind of cool.

**Andrew Zigler** (0:42)
Oh, weird.

**Ben Lloyd Pearson** (0:43)
Yeah. So I mean, it just started when someone pointed a mean comment directed at me, which I brushed those things off. But I looked at their profile and immediately got suspicious because it had some telltale signs of being a fake account. The biggest one being that they just use a stock photo, which I mean, it's 2025 If you're going to fake an account, at least get an AI-generated profile picture either.

**Andrew Zigler** (1:04)
Oh, that's bespoke. So this account had a stock photo as its profile image, not something that's AI-generated. Yes. Vintage. Vintage.

**Ben Lloyd Pearson** (1:12)
I love that. Vintage fake accounts.

**Andrew Zigler** (1:14)
Okay.

**Ben Lloyd Pearson** (1:14)
But I made a post just reflecting on this. I was like, wow, this is weird that somebody would use this account. It looks like they put effort into making it because it had 300 connections and whatnot. It looked like it was a human behind it and not AI. But in the comment section on that post, there was this AI sales rep that showed up to call out the behavior of fake accounts. I honestly found it to be hilarious because it self-identified as being AI powered. Like this is a GPT generated comment, and was calling out the practice of using fake accounts. It was really incredible.

**Andrew Zigler** (1:48)
That's very meta. This was happening on LinkedIn? Yeah.

**Ben Lloyd Pearson** (1:52)
I'm sitting there just wondering, are we really entering a future where AI is inserted into every facet of our lives? Whether we like it or not. So far with this one bot, I'm okay with it because it was this positive experience, but I still withhold the right to change my mind on that one.

**Andrew Zigler** (2:10)
Yeah. I think this is a good call to action for the real humans listening to us now on the podcast. Go interact with Ben. That way he doesn't get buried underneath a horde of robots on LinkedIn. Please. We're sharing cool stuff on there every week.
We need other humans here hand in hand with us to help build real good content for the world.

**Ben Lloyd Pearson** (2:27)
They're going to see that I'm someone that will comment back and engage with them and then other ones are going to show up. That's all my fee is going to become if I don't get more humans involved with this.

**Andrew Zigler** (2:36)
Yeah. I think that's definitely, sadly, sometimes where things are going. But that's the value of good authentic connection, right? When you find someone you really jive with online and just sharing cool stuff with them. That's what I love about things like LinkedIn. Just finding other people to nerd out about with.

**Ben Lloyd Pearson** (2:49)
Yeah, absolutely. That's my personal AI news for the week. Let's talk about this AI mandate that you brought up.

**Andrew Zigler** (2:57)
Oh, yeah. So I opened up with another AI mandate, making it a bit of a splash in the tech world. This latest one is from Duolingo. Other companies we've been covering on the pod, we've been talking about Shopify's mandate. Duolingo's is very similar in regards to changing how they structure the work that they assign to their employees, particularly their contract employees. And if it's a work or a job that can be done with AI, they're going to pursue technology and routes to better get that kind of process online.
This represents shifts that we're seeing everywhere across the industry. Some companies are being quiet about it. Some companies are being fully open, having mandates about how they're restructuring the way to work. So if you've even checked out the latest one from Duolingo, it's definitely worth a read. Duolingo has a massive impact on language learners across the world. It's almost impossible for anyone to not know what Duolingo is because it teaches folks that communicate in multiple languages. It's also a really effective learning tool in general. They have a great practice, great user experience. And so here's another company that's large with a lot of consumers, a lot of daily active users on their applications, making the call for AI-powered workflows within their company to get ahead in a space that they already have a lot of control on. Ben, did you hear about the new AI language learning app that hit the world from Google recently?