My Teammates Can’t Dream
We are rapidly moving from AI as a tool to AI as a participant.
Agentic systems now write code, review designs, raise flags, and hold context across long-running tasks. We are, whether we intend it or not, building teams that include non-human members.
But what is a team, really? Not a group. Not a workforce. A team is something older and stranger. Perhaps it begins with family, with the commitment to show up even when it is costly, with the shared meaning that makes humans build, play, march, dance, and sacrifice together.
In this talk, I explore what it actually means for an AI to be a teammate rather than a tool.
I will trace the history of cooperation — from the family unit to the draft animal to the machine on the factory floor — and ask what made each of these relationships work, and where they broke down. I will ask the questions: can something that can’t dream, can’t fear, can’t make sacrifices and doesn’t belong — can it truly be on your side? Can it earn your trust and loyalty? Can you count on it to be there for you when you need it? Who gets the credit when things go well? And when something goes horribly wrong, who is accountable and who is responsible?
Senior Architect at Imperva/Thales
Avraham Poupko is a Senior Software and System Architect at Imperva, a Thales Cyber and Digital company, where he leads the architectural vision for the Application Security Platform. A systems architect with more than two decades of experience analysing, modelling and designing software, his work spans event-driven architecture, big data pipelines and the application of generative AI at scale within the cybersecurity domain. Earlier in his career he focused on high-scale, high-performance systems, including network function virtualisation, unified communications and real-time video.
Beyond his architectural practice, Avraham studies, writes and teaches about systems thinking and the complex relationship between the organisations that build software and the software they produce. He is a regular speaker at industry events such as the Software Architecture Gathering and the Global Software Architecture Summit, and a frequent contributor to InfoQ, where his recent talks have explored how AI can assist architects in weighing trade-offs while keeping human judgement and accountability at the centre of design decisions.