How can product leaders navigate the challenges and opportunities of responsible AI in product management? In this podcast, Bill.com VP of Growth Heidi Gibson meets with Fiddler AI Meta AI Product Leader and Advisor Natalia Burina to discover the nuances and challenges of integrating AI in product management, from leveraging existing capabilities to building AI-powered solutions from scratch. Gain valuable insights into the role of responsible AI in product management and the importance of fairness, privacy, robustness, explainability, and accountability in AI products. Explore the dynamic relationship between product managers and engineers, and learn how they can collaborate to overcome obstacles and create successful AI-driven products.
Subscribe to the Product Talk podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and catch every conversation with leading product executives. Episodes drop on Wednesdays.
Show Notes
- Natalia is a product leader with experience in building AI products and teams at scale.
- She is passionate about using AI to build better products and emphasizes responsible AI.
- Natalia had to explain the value of product management to skeptics, particularly engineers.
- Strong relationships between product managers and engineers are important for unblocking obstacles and creating successful products.
- AI products are probabilistic, not deterministic, and perform tasks like prediction, recommendation, automation, and content generation.
- AI product managers have various roles, including integrating AI into existing products, building AI products from scratch, and working on AI platforms.
- Responsible AI product managers ensure fairness, privacy, robustness, explainability, and accountability in AI products.
- Challenges of AI product management include data sourcing, infrastructure, and iterative development cycles.
- Managing organizational expectations about the probabilistic nature of AI and the need for iteration is crucial.
- Native AI products have AI as their core value proposition, while bolt-on AI products add AI functionality to existing products.
- Product managers should familiarize themselves with AI capabilities and identify opportunities where AI can add value.
- Understanding the AI development lifecycle and practicing responsible AI are important for product managers.
- Matching technology with the product’s needs and setting realistic expectations is crucial.
- Off-the-shelf AI services and existing datasets are available for AI development.
- Responsible AI practices address bias, privacy, robustness, transparency, accountability, and upcoming AI regulations.
- Qualities of a great product manager include adaptability to different roles and contexts.
- AI-curious product managers should take action, stay curious, and build relationships.
- Recommended AI influencers mentioned are Dare Obasanjo and Bojan Tunguz.
- Tony Fadell’s book on product development is an excellent resource.
- Gayle Laakmann Mcdowell’s classic books on product management interviews are suggested.
- Ben Thompson’s newsletter for general technology and Andrew Ing’s newsletter for the latest AI developments are recommended for further knowledge.
About the speaker
About the host
Heidi Gibson has over 20 years of product management experience, with most of that focused on SaaS consumer/small business software. She is currently Senior Director of Product Led Growth at Adobe, and past companies include Typeform, GoDaddy and and other industry leaders. Heidi has a B.S. and M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT.