QCon London

2026-10-30

CODING · 1 SOURCE · InfoQ AI, ML & Data Engineering

QCon talk: 'The Ladder Is Missing Rungs' — engineering progression when AI eats the middle

At QCon London, Alasdair Allan summarized empirical work (METR, Anthropic, Redwood Research) showing broad adoption of AI coding tools but mixed productivity effects and potential long-term harms: METR's randomized trial found experienced developers using AI took ~19% longer than expected and a planned follow-up failed because participants refused to work without AI; Anthropic reports high internal usage (around 59% daily) and self‑reported productivity gains, while analyses (Redwood) challenge claims that AI now writes 90% of code. Allan framed a 'supervision paradox' — if AI replaces the tasks that train junior engineers, organizations risk losing institutional context and the pipeline needed to safely oversee increasingly autonomous systems.

5.0

2026-10-16

CODING · 1 SOURCE · InfoQ AI, ML & Data Engineering

Talk: 'Exploding GPUs' — AI security is still Kubernetes security (QCon London)

Andrew Martin, founder and CEO of ControlPlane, presented 'Exploding GPUs' at QCon London arguing that securing cloud‑native AI workloads remains fundamentally a Kubernetes problem. He outlined an evolving threat landscape — non‑deterministic agent behavior, GPU supply‑chain and shared‑compute risks, and model escape — and proposed practical defenses such as prompt firewalling and agentic identity for production environments.

5.0

2026-10-09

COMPANIES · 1 SOURCE · InfoQ AI, ML & Data Engineering

Netflix presents ontology‑driven E2E knowledge graph for observability

Netflix engineers Prasanna Vijayanathan and Renzo Sanchez‑Silva presented at QCon London an approach to observability that unifies MELT telemetry into a queryable end‑to‑end knowledge graph. They described replacing reactive monitoring with an AI‑driven operational ontology and agentic workflows (using Claude and graph databases) to enable automated triage, root‑cause analysis and self‑healing at Netflix scale (reported ~38M events/sec, 65M concurrent streams peak).

6.0

2026-09-30

CODING · 1 SOURCE · InfoQ AI, ML & Data Engineering

Patrick Debois presents 'Context Is the New Code' at QCon London

At QCon London, Patrick Debois argued for treating context as a first-class engineering artifact—applying SDLC practices (testing, CI/CD, package management, security scanning) to context to scale AI coding agents, control non-deterministic outputs, and preserve organizational knowledge. He discussed standards and tools such as AGENTS.md, referenced models like Claude, and cited context tools (Context7, Ref) and organizational practices for generating, evaluating, distributing, and observing context.

4.0

2026-09-23

COMPANIES · 1 SOURCE · InfoQ AI, ML & Data Engineering

Morgan Stanley uses CALM Architecture-as-Code to integrate MCP and A2A into its API program

At QCon London, Morgan Stanley engineers Jim Gough and Andreea Niculcea demonstrated how the firm has modernized its API program using an Architecture-as-Code approach called CALM, integrating the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Agent-to-Agent (A2A) communications. They showed demos of MCP-enabled flows, automated governance via deployment gates, and zero-downtime platform upgrades to scale agentic workflows and production APIs (over 110 APIs deployed to date).

5.0

2026-09-16

COMPANIES · 1 SOURCE · InfoQ AI, ML & Data Engineering

Duolingo pairs AI literacy training with an autonomous PR risk‑assessment bot

At QCon London, Duolingo engineer Sarah Deitke described how the company's DevEx AI team combines internal lab-style AI literacy workshops and AI observability dashboards with guardrails to enable an automated PR risk‑assessment bot that redesigns code review; the approach reportedly speeds delivery without increasing defect rates. The talk emphasized pairing targeted developer education with monitoring and safety measures to build trust and accountability for autonomous tooling.

5.0