Michael Carducci - LLMs without the guesswork: blueprint for deterministic AI
Details
As AI gets better at generating code, another engineering skill comes into focus: building a coherent model of the world our software operates in. Developers do pieces of this work all the time, but much of the meaning ends up hidden in code instead of expressed in the data.
This talk begins by showing where that approach breaks down. From there, we’ll build up a new way to think about data that can represent concepts and relationships without forcing everything into tables. You’ll see why the semantic stack matters for AI and why it will soon become the most valuable skill an engineer can learn.
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Michael Carducci spent years learning to see things as they actually are; first as a magician, then as a software architect, now as both simultaneously. And somehow that’s not even the whole story.
He’s the author of Mastering Software Architecture (Apress, 2025) and is currently writing The Semantic Blueprint (Packt, 2026). He has spent over 25 years following interesting problems; through roles from individual contributor to CTO and back again, across industries and continents.
As a speaker, he applies the same toolkit he uses in close-up magic: attention, misdirection, timing, storytelling, and the instinct to take the long way around when that’s where the truth lives. Audiences at hundreds of conferences across four continents have described his talks as the kind that change how you think about a problem rather than just what you know about it.
He also makes YouTube videos about technology and curiosity with his wife Kate, because some ideas are too important (or too interesting!) to leave only in conference rooms.