The highest ROI for AI in infrastructure may come before execution.
AI should review infrastructure before it changes infrastructure.
Generating commands, Terraform, scripts, or policies is increasingly easy.
The harder question is whether the proposed change is safe, necessary, reversible, and well understood.
Before execution, AI can help identify:
AI should not replace human accountability. It should improve the material humans review.
A human approving a well-analyzed change is in a much stronger position than one approving a vague request.
AI does not need root to create value.
It can create enormous value by improving the quality of engineering review before production is touched.