Devs on Tape x APEX Connect 26 - Connor McDonald: “Most pioneers died” – AI, APEX 26 and why security matters

What happens when your AI agent has exactly the same database privileges as you do?

That might sound like a theoretical question.

It isn’t anymore.

At APEX Connect 2026, Caro and I sat down once again with Connor McDonald – Oracle Developer Advocate, long-time Ask TOM expert, international speaker and by now something of a regular guest on Devs On Tape.

And as usual with Connor, we start in one place and somehow end up somewhere completely different. 😄

We talk about his travels through the Oracle community, why he increasingly prefers running conference demos locally, APEX 26, local LLMs, skills and how AI is changing the way we think about software development.

But eventually we arrive at a topic that probably deserves much more attention:

Security.

Because when an AI agent acts on our behalf during development, it can potentially do everything we can do.

And suddenly, a database privilege that was simply a little too generous becomes a very different kind of risk.

Connor sums it up perfectly:

“People want to be pioneers, but a lot of people forget that the early pioneers – most of them died.”