PRODUCTHEAD: AI anthology

product a(i) #

every PRODUCTHEAD edition is online for you to refer back to

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tl;dr

Ready meals are okay, just not all the time

Previous hype cycles masked who really had product-market fit and who didn’t

Humans excel where AI doesn’t

New tech rarely solves social problems

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hello

For this edition of PRODUCTHEAD, I’ve collected some earlier essays of mine about generative AI and how it affects our work as product people.

Later this week I’m also hoping to publish a long-form article on I Manage Products that I’ve been working on for a while, tentatively titled ‘We’re all addicted to AI, but it’s going to be okay’. There’s a separate free subscription for IMP if you want to receive it in your inbox when it drops.

Speak to you soon,

Jock

P.S. All my words are 100% organic, not AI-generated, and always have been. Just in case you were wondering. 

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what to think about this week

Angel Delight

13 January 2025

Angel Delight was a hugely popular dessert in the UK in the ‘70s and ‘80s. It was easy to make but devoid of substance. It looked like food, tasted like food (weeelllll, kinda), but barely delivered any of the benefits of food.

Generative AI is our generation’s Angel Delight. It creates stuff that looks and sounds plausible but is ultimately a facsimile of the real thing. Whether it delivers any value depends on your perspective.

There’s space for both slow cooking and ready meals

[I Manage Products]

History repeating

25 March 2024

One of the lessons from the dotcom bubble bursting was that it revealed the stark difference between products meeting an actual user need (and doing it well) and those that weren’t as close to product-market fit, but got away with it when the money was flowing more freely.

A technology bubble will mask that your product is a discretionary ‘want’ rather than a must-have need.

Unmet user need or superficial gimmick?

[I Manage Products]

New tech, new responsibilities

24 February 2025

We each owe a duty of care to our users not to expose them to harm through use of our products. Any genAI model is a non-deterministic black box that can cause harm either through overtly harmful responses, or by confidently presenting incorrect information as truth.

It is our responsibility as product managers to assess those potential harms with our teams, to decide whether they are an acceptable risk, and to figure out how to mitigate or remove that risk.

AI tech companies needs are not aligned with those of your users

[I Manage Products]

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The value of the human in the loop

23 February 2026

I’m beginning to suspect that the kind of corporate leaders who wave away swathes of employees in favour of generative AI are the kind that value mediocrity.

Perhaps the widespread adoption of genAI highlights the value of having a product manager as the ‘human in the loop’, precisely because we can do what AI cannot.

We’re better than statistically amalgamated responses to prompts

[I Manage Products]

Move fast and break things – AI edition

7 July 2025

What happens to your organisation when anyone can build and ship stuff rapidly?

Does this empower teams to solve their own problems and to shorten time to value?

Or does it result in fragmented initiatives, inconsistency and chaos?

I think it all rather depends on the organisation. Let’s explore the two scenarios.

GenAI accelerates the trajectory your org was already on

[I Manage Products]

New technology alone is not the answer

12 March 2025

A liberal sprinkling of new technology over an organisation is not going to suddenly make all its challenges disappear overnight. Why? Because more often than not, those challenges are social not technological. Technology alone rarely solves ‘people problems’.

The rising tide lifts all boats

[I Manage Products]

PRODUCTHEAD is a newsletter for product people of all varieties, and is lovingly crafted from the mother of all rotas.