You can shortcut a lot of things. Training, testing, and QA aren't on the list.

When people say "AI makes software cheap," they're half right, and the missing half is the one that matters.

AI compresses the build: the labor, the coordination, the raw hours of getting something working. What it does not compress is everything that makes software trustworthy enough to run a business on. Training the people who'll use it. Testing the edges where things break. The unglamorous QA that catches the failure before your customer does.

That's exactly where the money you saved should go. A demo and a production system are two different products. The difference between them is the rigor nobody sees, and it's the first thing the "cheap because AI" crowd cuts, which is why their stuff eventually breaks in front of a customer.

We put our largest investment in the parts you can't shortcut. The build got faster. The standards didn't move.