From Fear to Force Multiplier: AI’s Journey Through the Eyes of Network Engineers
The Art of Network Engineering
A podcast and blog dedicated to all things Network Engineering, and other related topics.
Once upon a time, Artificial Intelligence (AI) was the bogeyman of IT; an ominous specter haunting late-night strategy meetings and job security debates. Fast forward to today, and AI has graduated from misunderstood menace to indispensable partner. In a lively discussion between Jeff Clark and Andy Lapteff, we’re treated to a firsthand account of how that transformation unfolded, not just for the industry but for the individuals living it.
A Personal Journey: From Reluctance to Reinvention
Andy Lapteff’s story might sound familiar. An engineer by trade, Andy initially viewed AI with suspicion; less opportunity and more threat. He had the same skepticism toward automation in his early career, treating code like it was someone else’s job. But the story shifted. With AI as his scaffold, Andy began building a SaaS product. Not as a software engineer, but as someone armed with ideas and an AI co-pilot that turns napkin sketches into production-ready code. This wasn’t reinvention through reskilling, it was reinvention through collaboration with machines.
Jeff’s Toolkit: Notebook LM, Gemini, and AI That Writes Code
Jeff, who embraced AI earlier, takes listeners on a tour of the tools transforming his workflow:
What once took hours, or even teams, can now be done in minutes, conversationally.
Real-World Engineering, Rewritten
The moment that wowed Andy most was deceptively simple. Jeff uploaded a hand-drawn network diagram and asked ChatGPT to generate configurations for three FortiGate devices. Not only were the results 100% accurate, but the AI asked smart follow-up questions: What IPs should we use? What DNS settings apply? Would you like a script to automate this in the future?
Jeff clicked “yes,” and AI generated a working Ansible playbook. That’s when the conversation shifted from “this is cool” to “this is a force multiplier.” This isn’t about replacing engineers, it’s about freeing them. The engineer’s role shifts from line-by-line configurator to systems thinker and strategic architect.
The Elephant in the Room: Security
Of course, with great power comes great surface area. Jeff, with a security background, brings the cautionary note: public AI tools can be data leakage nightmares. Proprietary configs or sensitive docs dropped into a public AI chat? That’s a compliance report waiting to happen. The industry is responding with internal AI deployments; sandboxed, policy-compliant, and privacy-first. The promise of AI remains intact, but so does the perimeter.
The New Skillset: Human + Machine
The big takeaway from Jeff and Andy’s journey? The winning move isn’t resisting AI, it’s redefining your role with it. Engineers aren’t being replaced. They’re being refocused. Let the AI write the YAML. You focus on the architecture. Let the AI crawl logs. You ask the questions only experience can frame.
As the future unfolds, it’s not the most technical or most experienced who will thrive, it’s the most adaptable. The ones who see AI not as a competitor, but as a multiplier. As Andy proved, you don’t need a CS degree to build software anymore. You just need curiosity and the right tools.
And maybe, just maybe, a little less fear.
Because in the end, AI doesn’t replace humans, it reveals what humans can become when the burden of drudgery is lifted.
Listen to the full episode here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2127872/episodes/17277531
Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/7EsSwKhLP9E