In a podcast recorded on 2026-09-28, TypeSafe founder and leader Diogo joined Martin and another host to discuss his company’s product, JEV, and its revolutionary approach to AI in software development. Diogo, described as a "hero" for his unique blend of AI research, systems expertise, and programming acumen, challenged the prevailing narrative around AI by asking, "Where the f*** is all the automation?"
Diogo lamented that despite AI's "unbelievably smart" capabilities, it remains largely "useless at all other stuff" beyond chatbots and coding agents, failing to deliver on the promise of widespread automation. He argued that while current AI tools like Cloud Code or Codex (dubbed "just-in-time software" by Gary Tan) are excellent at generating code, they merely replicate what a human would write, often without true semantic understanding or architectural insight.
TypeSafe's JEV, on the other hand, aims to create "smart software" by expanding what software itself can do. Diogo described JEV as a "new primitive" or an "intelligent layer inside the software," functioning like a library that allows developers to describe intent in natural language, which then interacts with a state machine to make decisions with confidence levels. This approach, he explained, makes things that *should* be automatable, *actually* automatable, moving beyond human-in-the-loop interactions to build "real software." While acknowledging JEV as a "classifier," Diogo emphasized its design for practical utility, potentially outperforming even 2019 Machine Learning Engineering (MLE) teams.
Diogo's personal journey, from award-winning mathlete to a computer scientist who fell into AI research, informed his pragmatic vision. He won a Kaggle competition not through sophisticated math but by automating extensively, pushing him towards a systems-first approach to AI. His career path led him through Google Brain and OpenAI, where he was deeply involved in early GPT developments.
Central to TypeSafe's philosophy is the motto, "we build prod, not God." Diogo vehemently disagrees with the "mono model Kool-Aid" of a single all-powerful AI, advocating instead for a future of enhanced jobs and a "way better world." He expressed frustration over the "discordance with reality" where AI has immense potential but basic tasks (like customer service, which OpenAI has been trying to automate since 2020) remain unautomated.
A key differentiator for JEV is its focus on **reliability**. Diogo explained that this means ensuring "similar intelligence every time" (robustness), not just uptime or strict determinism. The ultimate goal is for developers to trust JEV implicitly, allowing them to achieve a "perma flow state" without needing to test example queries.
Diogo projected that JEV would have a transformative effect on the software industry. He argued that while coding agents might automate syntax, they often fall short on architecture and semantics. JEV, by contrast, provides new capabilities *within* the software, leading to inherently better applications. He noted that the initial "SaaS-pocalypse" fears (that AI coding agents would devalue SaaS companies) have been replaced by an "inverse saspocalypse" or "Sassapalooza" for SaaS companies adopting JEV, as it dramatically enhances their product's utility. Diogo envisions a future where multi-choice forms disappear, and all technology "does what I mean."
Ultimately, Diogo sees JEV as bridging the long-standing gap where AI and software were like "ships in the night." Previously, AI's natural language outputs often had to be fed back to humans or other LLMs due to software's inability to process them directly. JEV's ability to map AI directly to a state machine offers a productive way to integrate intelligence deeply into system "guts," opening up new eras for probabilistic programming and enabling a fundamental rebuilding of software systems.