“If one software developer is AI-fluent, you can build a software development organization where you didn’t have one before,” Swigart said. AI, in his framing, cost-effectively democratizes building proprietary tools and solutions – a capability once reserved for carriers with large in-house engineering teams. Carriers that only ever license third-party tools, he said, will not differentiate. Software development, in other words, is set to become more important to a commercial carrier’s competitive position, not less, precisely because AI has lowered the cost of doing it in-house.
