For many engineers, the excessive hype has turned the word “AI” into a somewhat agonizing buzzword. There seems to be an interesting phenomenon going on with how products are built today around this buzzword. Every product team is jumping on this wave likely out of a fear of lagging behind. Though, what I see is complacency where products that don’t need to be ‘AI’ suddenly are, and the products that are AI are AI for the sake of being AI. I’ve seen an overwhelming amount of examples, but let’s look at the recent few.
Because this hypetrain is going fast, very fast, I guess it only makes sense for builders, PMs and engineers to come up with “AI product features” for the sake of AI. It gives everyone a feeling of innovation and progress. It also creates a good look for everyone involved since this is the current thing.
“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology. You can’t start with the technology then try to figure out where to sell it.”