Navigating AI Product Management Challenges

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Marily is a computer scientist and an AI Product Leader currently working for Meta’s reality labs, and previously at Google for 8 years. In 2014 she completed a PhD in Machine Learning. She is also an Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School and she has taught numerous courses, actively teaching AI Product Management on Maven and at Harvard. Marily joins us in today's episode to shed light on the role of AI in product management. She shares her insights on how AI is empowering her work, and why she believes that every Product Manager will be an AI Product Manager in the future. We also discuss why PM’s should learn a bit of coding, where they can learn it, and best practices for working with data scientists. Marily shares some insight into building her AI Product Management course and also why she full-heartedly believes you should also create your own course.

Where to find Marily Nika:

• Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/marilynika

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marilynika/

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MarilyNikaPM

• Website: https://bio.link/marilynika

Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

Referenced:

• The Download newsletter: https://www.technologyreview.com/topic/download-newsletter/

• TLDR newsletter: https://tldr.tech/

• ChatGPT: https://chat.openai.com/auth/login

• MidJourney: https://midjourney.com/home/

• Whisper: https://whisper.ai/

• Machine Learning Specialization course: https://www.coursera.org/specializations/machine-learning-introduction

• Career Foundry: https://careerfoundry.com/

• Coding Dojo: https://www.codingdojo.com/

• Building AI Products—For Current & Aspiring Product Managers course on Maven: https://maven.com/marily-nika/technical-product-management

• arXiv: https://arxiv.org/

• Marginal Revolution blog: https://marginalrevolution.com/

• Automl: https://cloud.google.com/automl

• Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love: https://www.amazon.com/INSPIRED-Create-Tech-Products-Customers/dp/1119387507

• You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It’s Making the World a Weirder Place: https://www.amazon.com/You-Look-Like-Thing-Love/dp/0316525227

• The Adventures of Women in Tech Workbook: A Life-Tested Guide to Building Your Career: https://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Women-Tech-Workbook/dp/1646871022

• Boz to the Future podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/boz-to-the-future/id1574002430

• The White Lotus on HBO: https://www.hbo.com/the-white-lotus

• Lensa: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lensa-ai-photo-video-editor/id1436732536

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Marily’s background

(03:20) How Marily stays informed about the latest developments in AI

(04:46) What is overhyped and underhyped in AI right now

(05:59) How Marily uses ChatGPT for work

(08:25) Why product managers will be AI product managers in the future

(11:16) How to get started using AI

(14:12) When not to use AI

(15:47) How much data do you need for AI to work properly?

(17:01) When should companies develop their own AI tools?

(18:35) What an AI model is and how it is trained

(21:25) How Google demonstrated the ability of AI to translate a conversation in real time

(23:02) Why AI will not replace PMs

(23:48) A case for learning to code

(26:21) Where to learn to code

(27:40) How to become a strong AI PM

(29:25) Challenges that AI PMs face

(31:16) Getting leadership on board with investing in AI

(33:10) How PMs will work with data scientists and AI

(35:29) Marily’s AI course

(39:12) AutoML and how a renewable-energy company used it to improve its turbine maintenance procedure

(40:31) How Marily built her course and the modifications she has made

(42:53) Why you should create your own course

(44:08) Lightning round

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