Pittsburgh TechFest 2026

Someone at your company got handed AI and told to "go figure it out." More and more, that someone is a technologist — and the instinct is to prove it by mastering the tools. That's the fast climb up "Mount Stupid," where quiet dabbling turns into shadow AI, exposed data, and surprise costs nobody budgeted for.
This talk reframes the job. The strongest AI champions aren't the most technical people in the room; they're the ones who apply judgment to real business problems. We'll break down what the role actually demands: justifying the investment to leadership, disarming pushback from other teams, finding where the value truly is, and catching the quiet killers — data, process, and legal readiness — before they sink an initiative.
You'll leave able to drive AI adoption that delivers instead of detonates, and to become the person who gets the credit for bringing it in right.