I was chatting with a product lead at Google last week who told me something that stuck with me: “My team now spends more time talking to our AI systems than to our actual users.」 It made me wonder – are we witnessing the evolution of product management, or the beginning of its extinction?
Let’s be honest here. The traditional product manager role has always been a bit of a hybrid creature – part business strategist, part user advocate, part data analyst, and part project coordinator. But AI is systematically dismantling this Swiss Army knife approach. When McKinsey reports that AI can automate up to 45% of current PM activities, we’re not talking about incremental change – we’re talking about fundamental transformation.
Remember when we used to spend weeks gathering user requirements? Now, AI systems can analyze thousands of user interactions in minutes, identifying patterns we’d never spot. The team at Netflix revealed they process over 100 million hours of viewing data daily to inform their product decisions. That’s not just data analysis – that’s cognitive augmentation.
But here’s where it gets interesting. The core principles from The Qgenius Golden Rules of Product Development become more relevant than ever. “Product is technology and cognition compromise,」 as the rules state. AI represents the ultimate technological advancement, but user experience still requires that human touch – what I call “reverse innovation.」 We’re building smarter systems, but we need to make them feel simpler to users.
The market segmentation principle – “What determines user groups and market segments is mental models」 – becomes crucial when AI can process millions of data points. But can AI truly understand the nuanced mental models of different user segments? I’m skeptical. I’ve seen too many AI-driven products fail because they optimized for data patterns while ignoring human psychology.
Here’s what’s changing in practice: Data analysis and reporting? Automated. A/B testing optimization? AI-driven. Market research synthesis? Getting there. But strategic vision, team leadership, and understanding the unspoken needs of users? Those remain firmly human domains – for now.
The real danger isn’t that AI will replace product managers. The danger is that product managers who don’t adapt will become irrelevant. I see three emerging PM archetypes: the AI-Enhanced PM (uses AI as a tool), the AI-Product PM (builds AI products), and the AI-Strategy PM (focuses on AI integration strategy). Which one are you becoming?
What fascinates me is how this aligns with the Qgenius principle about leadership: “The product manager’s core capability is leadership, and shared values and vision are the foundation of team synergy.」 As AI handles more execution, the human PM’s value shifts increasingly toward leadership and vision-setting.
So here’s my take: The traditional PM isn’t disappearing – it’s evolving into something more strategic, more human-centric, and frankly, more interesting. The routine tasks are being automated, freeing us to focus on what really matters: creating products that deliver disproportionate value to users.
But I have to ask: When your AI assistant can predict market trends better than you and analyze user behavior more thoroughly, what unique value do you bring to the table? Maybe the answer isn’t in the data, but in the human connection that data can never fully capture.