I am going to write a series of posts on AI and in particular Generative AI. My focus is going to not be on the technology, but more the impact on specific jobs / roles.

Some assumptions I am making:

1. The generative AI genie won’t get put back into the bottle – meaning Governments cannot “regulate” companies to stop work on AI
2. There will be a host of winners and losers from this move to Generative AI – within each role and type of person.
3. While AI “evens the playing field for the “mediocre person” and the “good person”, the gap between the “great person” for a role and the others will only get larger with AI.
4. Most roles will change dramatically, not be completely eliminated. Unfortunately, instead of a company needing 10 product managers, they might be able to achieve more with fewer (5 or even less)
5. A small number of people (< 5% of the 1B on LinkedIn are active monthly users) are already using Generative AI in some form (ChatGPT, Jasper.ai) in their work already.

I am going to start with the Product Manager (PM). Specifically the technology software product manager. Not a Director or a Vice President, but just an individual contributor in a software company.

Most PMs (should) do 5 things well.

1. Assess customer needs and determine how problems customer’s have get translated into requirements
2. Prioritize what gets built by engineering / technology teams
3. Price, Position and frame the product – enabling marketing and sales teams to promote and sell
4. Collect customer feedback, track competitive landscape & measure profitability & market share
5. Train sales & support teams on product and resolve issues to incorporate into future product roadmap.

While the top 5 sounds very strategic and important, the day to day is filled with drudgery of joining tables, making queries on multiple databases, Excel wrangling, Document writing, rewriting and rewrite the rewrite.

Created with MidJourney: a man with the drudgery of working with Excel, multiple queries, doing lots of data analysis

With almost every product that a PM uses daily – including Microsoft Office, Salesforce, HubSpot, Atlassian, etc. all announcing Generative AI in their products, the “drudgery” should go away, making most PM more productive.

Which leads to fewer PM. While AI might not “eliminate” jobs, it will still displace many junior PMs.

So how can you future proof yourself?

1. Index on customer interactions, building customer trust and traction more than ever.
2. Aggressively use as much Generative AI in all you do with the intent to be more productive.
3. Research and keep up with trends and technologies outside your core functional PM job