AI Product Management

Whenever a “good enough” prototype can be created just from a prompt, it becomes possible to scrap it every time it’s not quite right and regenerate, instead of editing the code. Working this way, the prompt is the “source code” and the code a kind of compiled artifact.

Currently the generated prototype usually needs tweaks and that’s if it even works. But when it does work, it’s like the model is reading your mind.

In the future as models improve at coding, they will anticipate the tweaks that make sense, less of the prompt will need to be specified & there’ll be less polish work after you get the generated artifact, and you can work at an even higher level of abstraction and thought. Domain experts can create even bigger, cooler things without spending’s years getting software engineering skills.

Assemblers and compilers came along very early in our industry’s history. If you run the thought experiment that that’s where we are at with prompted software creation, it will be a wild and exciting future. More people creating more stuff means a tremendous amount of amazing creations to enjoy.

Andrew Ng isn't proposing anything more than starting with a product idea rather than a market definition. "I've got an idea for a product so let's build a prototype to test it" isn't waterfall.

His argument is pointlessly contrarian, too. He says his proposal is counter to design thinking, but design thinking would encourage you to build the exact same prototype he is proposing. As his own piece acknowledges, if you're at an early stage where you don't have any specific product ideas, design thinking could be a good starting point.

In practice, this is all the same core idea. The end result is better if you investigate real ideas rather than rely on abstractions and assumptions. Test your ideas with prototypes. Be ready to discover your favourite idea doesn't work and change direction.

I wonder if he's really arguing against something that is independent of the method chosen: handing your money and control over to teams whose incentives are to spend as much time as possible on consultative exercises.

The comment I was replying to has this quote in it

> he went beyond just advocating for concrete specs and explicitly challenged the traditional design-thinking approach, arguing that teams should pick a fully formed idea and run with it rather than spending too long on broad problem exploration and multiple potential solutions