1 Tip I would give Product Managers who want to get started working in Artificial Intelligence
So you are a PM and you want to started working in Artificial Intelligence?
I have been working in AI for the last 5 years now. As a background, I started my company because my hypothesis was (5 years ago) was that “AI is the imminent future” and I was annoyed that the adoption of the technology wasn’t happening fast enough. Rather than wait for others to do something here, I decided to “be the change you seek,” and started a company in my domain.
The good news today is, you don’t need to go through my route to start working in AI. You can’t escape the damn thing (AI) today :-) and there are plenty of opportunities around…
So what I can tell you (from experience) is that in order to work as a successful Product Manager in/using AI, you need to first be a solid Product Manager, specifically in the following three areas:
Domain expertise: An absolute grasp on your domain and the problem space. So that you can ask the question ”Does the problem space lend itself to AI and in what ways?”
Audience: their behaviors, their propensity to adopt new technologies specifically AI. So that you can ask the question “How should you introduce AI in the problem space? Should you be incremental or disruptive?”
PM craft: ability to tradeoff the transient value versus long term value—because if you look around today, everybody is sprinkling AI and building features/companies that aren’t defensible. (Plus, the first two bullet points can only work well if your craft is strong.)
So, here's the 1 tip I would give you if you wanted to be in AI.
Side note: I know that there is a mad-rush at the moment to get into AI as if it is a “scarce commodity.” It isn’t! We have entered a new era of computing and one that will remain with us just as the “internet” or “desktops” became the norm when they were introduced.
Thus, over a period of time, every PM will be introducing AI to their products.
So you need to “slow down so that you can speed up.”
Get a grasp of the landscape and fundamentals of AI/ML
Step back for a few months, catch up on the fundamentals, map out the landscape where you will be playing in. Build the basic body of fundamentals so that you can sit with your engineering counterparts and understand why certain tradeoffs will be made.
While you build the understanding of the landscape, ask yourself where in the existing product can you bring in the technology and how would it make the lives of your audience better. If you find a compelling use-case, go through the usual PM route to introduce that as a feature for your audience