In this episode of The Data Source Podcast, I’m joined by John Murphy, Co-Founder of Ailíniú, to explore what it really means to build with AI in practice.

John spent years as a Chief Architect in some of Ireland’s largest organisations before moving back into building products himself, with AI now a core part of how he works.

We discuss the difference between architecture and shipping, why AI can help teams build faster, and why that also makes it easier to build the wrong thing quickly.

John shares a practical view of how he uses AI day to day – as a thinking partner, a second brain, and a coding assistant – while also explaining where deep human judgement still matters most.

We also get into the reality of taking AI into production: deterministic answers, evaluation, observability, model changes, fallback paths, human oversight, vendor risk and governance.

For regulated firms in banking and insurance, John explains why AI governance cannot be compliance theatre. The firms that get this right are not slowing themselves down – they are creating the guardrails that allow them to move faster with confidence.

This is a conversation about AI, architecture, regulation and what it takes to ship useful, controlled and trustworthy systems in the real world.

Enjoy!