What happens when artificial intelligence moves beyond assisting individual developers and solves problems across thousands of codebases simultaneously?

In this episode of AI at Work, we explore how AI is being used to tackle one of the most complex challenges in modern software development: large-scale code migrations. Justine Gehring, AI research engineer at Moderne and author of AI for Mass-Scale Code Refactoring and Analysis, joins the show to explain how she and her team are helping enterprises rethink how they approach code changes across massive environments.

While many are familiar with tools like GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT that assist with writing or suggesting code snippets, Justine shares how mass-scale refactoring calls for a very different set of tools and methods. At Moderne, AI is applied with precision inside an open-source framework called OpenRewrite, which enables consistent and verifiable code changes while maintaining enterprise-level reliability and security.

We discuss how Moderne's approach blends deterministic automation with targeted machine learning to make code migrations faster and more trustworthy. From onboarding new developers to simplifying upgrades across legacy systems, the real-world impact of this work is becoming increasingly visible in sectors like banking and insurance, where complexity and risk have historically slowed down innovation.

This episode also dives into how AI enhances collaboration between developers and machines. Justine highlights the potential for AI to become a quiet partner in understanding, searching, and maintaining vast repositories of code and why this shift may help organizations reduce technical debt and increase maintainability over time.

For business leaders evaluating how AI fits into their development strategy, this conversation offers a practical look at how to make meaningful progress without cutting corners. Whether you're leading a digital team or managing critical systems, Justine's insights reveal what it truly takes to put AI to work at scale.