The New Stack Podcast

Author: The New Stack

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Why You Can't Build AI Without Progressive Delivery
Episode 1581
Tuesday, 23 December, 2025

Former GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke’s claim that AI-based development requires progressive delivery frames a conversation between analyst James Governor and The New Stack’s Alex Williams about why modern release practices matter more than ever. Governor argues that AI systems behave unpredictably in production: models can hallucinate, outputs vary between versions, and changes are often non-deterministic. Because of this uncertainty, teams must rely on progressive delivery techniques such as feature flags, canary releases, observability, measurement and rollback. These practices, originally developed to improve traditional software releases, now form the foundation for deploying AI safely. Concepts like evaluations, model versioning and controlled rollouts are direct extensions of established delivery disciplines. Beyond AI, Governor’s book “Progressive Delivery” challenges DevOps thinking itself. He notes that DevOps focuses on development and operations but often neglects the user feedback loop. Using a framework of four A’s — abundance, autonomy, alignment and automation — he argues that progressive delivery reconnects teams with real user outcomes. Ultimately, success isn’t just reliability metrics, but whether users are actually satisfied. Learn more from The New Stack about progressive delivery: Mastering Progressive Hydration for Enhanced Web Performance Continuous Delivery: Gold Standard for Software Development Join our community of newsletter subscribers to stay on top of the news and at the top of your game. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.