How is AI changing digital product development?

Marty Cagan

Partner · Silicon Valley Product Group

Human judgment and craft

Marty Cagan says the difference between a great product and a mediocre one is human judgment and craft, since the models are trained on the average and converge on mediocrity.

Ravi Mehta

Angel Investor · Traveljoy

Reducing build cost

Ravi Mehta says AI is reducing build cost: it made building software much cheaper, which puts the hard parts of product work—judgment, craft and customer understanding—in sharper focus.

Josh Elman

Director of Product Management · Apple

Empowering higher‑order work

Josh Elman says AI should empower people to do their jobs better rather than eliminate them, and that automating easier tasks helps move to higher-order thinking.

The answer starts at 30:50.

JE

Jonathan Evens

Product Lead · Google Deepmind

More prompting

Jonathan Evens says the process is moving from traditional machine learning engineering to more prompting, where much is done by iterating on prompts and building eval sets.

Ben Celebicic

Chief Product and Technology Officer (CPTO) · Hinge

Accelerating feedback loops

Ben Celebicic says the biggest value he sees at Hinge is speeding up the feedback loop: he can prototype without engineering support and learn much faster whether an idea is worth building.

Lars Grønnegaard Hansen

CPO and Co-Founder · Dreamdata

Rapid prototyping

Lars Grønnegaard Hansen says AI is changing product building by making rapid prototyping realistic: his company can now build prototypes close to the real product at an effort that was previously impossible.

The answer starts at 35:10.

Tara Seshan

Member of Product Staff · Openai

Expanding possibilities

Tara Seshan says the most effective users of AI tools don't just automate rote tasks but use them to expand the set of things they are capable of doing, widening their range of possibilities so they can realize more of what's in their head.

Sachin Rekhi

Course Creator · Reforge

Automating research and execution

Sachin Rekhi says AI is changing product building by automating research and execution, with skills for user research and day-to-day tasks that free him for higher-value work.

Rohan Varma

Product, Codex · OpenAI

It multiplies output

Rohan Varma says AI multiplies output rather than shrinking it, because the right frame is leverage: teams can do 5x more things, with each role moving from doing the work to directing agents.

Daniel Herrington

Chief AI Officer · The Zebra

Automating code generation

Daniel Herrington says AI now automates code generation: his team spawns agents to write code fixing errors in carrier API connections, and skips reviewing the pull request when whether it works is verifiable.

FF

Faith Forster

Chief Maker · Discoveree For Product Leaders & Managers

Focus on adoption

Faith Forster says AI changes the definition of done: because it’s quick and easy to build or change features, it’s no longer about the feature so much and is now about adoption.