You’ve probably read a dozen of these articles about AI and product management, each one promising to “revolutionise your workflow” or “10x your productivity.”
But, honestly speaking, this stuff actually works. As someone who’s been in the PM trenches for nearly a decade, who’s shipped products at Spotify and Wise, who’s built ML models to fight fraud and optimise delivery times, and who’s now navigating the wild world of crypto, AI has significantly changed my workflow.
My name’s Rodney. I have a Master’s in Big Data and Digital Futures, and over the past two years, I’ve watched AI fundamentally change what’s possible for product managers. Not in some distant, theoretical way but more in practical, “I literally built multiple apps by myself” kind of ways.
So if you’re a junior PM trying to figure out how to stand out, someone switching careers into product, or a seasoned PM who knows there’s a better way to work but hasn’t quite figured it out yet, this one’s for you.
Education: You Have a Personal Teacher Now. Use It.
Remember when learning something new meant watching endless YouTube videos, reading outdated blog posts, or sheepishly asking your colleagues the same question for the third time?
Those days are over.
You now have access to a personalised teacher that never gets tired, never judges you for asking basic questions, and can explain things ten different ways until something clicks. The difference between AI and a YouTube video? You can actually have a conversation.
I realised this when I was trying to understand why we needed to collect certain user information at the crypto company I work at. Compliance isn’t my background, and honestly, I felt a bit lost. But instead of nodding along in meetings or bothering our compliance team with questions I probably should have known the answers to, I built myself a curriculum using AI.
I’d ask it to explain a regulation. It would break it down. I’d ask why that regulation existed. It would give me context. I’d ask what happens if we don’t comply. It would walk me through the consequences and I could ask it to point me to the actual documentation so I can verify its accuracy.
“Treat AI like a tutor, not a search engine.”Rodney Gold, Senior Product Manager
By the time I sat down with our compliance team, I wasn’t coming in cold. I could have real, strategic conversations about what mattered and what didn’t. I could push back thoughtfully when something seemed excessive. I could add value instead of just taking notes.
You can do this for anything. Product principles you’ve heard about but never deeply understood. Technical concepts that your engineers throw around casually. The competitive landscape in your industry. Frameworks for prioritisation, experimentation, user research, and more. Whatever gaps you have, you can fill them.
You have to treat AI like a tutor, not a search engine. Don’t just ask for answers. Build a curriculum. Work through it systematically. Ask follow-up questions. Challenge what it tells you. Actually learn the thing.
Optimisation: Your Day Just Got a Lot More Efficient
Let’s talk about PRDs. You know, those documents that somehow take three times longer to write than they should?
Here’s my workflow now: I brain dump the problem we’re solving and what we want to achieve. Nothing polished, just a rough outline. I feed it to AI and let it structure it, expand on it, suggest sections I might have missed. Then I go back and rewrite the parts that need my specific knowledge, including our user flows, our technical constraints, the organisational context that no AI could possibly know.
What used to take me several hours now takes maybe half that.
But speed is just the beginning. The real unlock is having an intellectual sparring partner available 24/7.
I recently built an app that uses the OpenAI API as well as other APis, and my costs were getting out of hand. I needed to cut down on API calls without making the experience laggy or worse for users. So I had this long, winding conversation with AI about caching strategies, batch processing, and UX trade-offs. It pushed back on my assumptions. It asked questions I hadn’t considered. It helped me think more rigorously about the problem.
This is the kind of conversation you’d normally have with a senior colleague over coffee. Except AI doesn’t have meetings to get to, doesn’t mind if you ask basic questions, and won’t judge you for exploring ten different approaches before picking one.
It’s not perfect (more on that later) but it’s changed how I think through problems.
Innovation: Stop Talking About What You’d Build. Actually Build It.
This is where things get really fun.
Two years ago, if you told me I’d build three full production apps by myself in a matter of months (a Chrome extension, a web app, an iOS app) I would have laughed. I’m a PM, not an engineer. Sure, I understand technical concepts, but building actual products in such a short timespan was not something I saw myself being capable of doing.
But here’s what I’ve built using AI:
Reach Out – Stay Connected – an iOS app that facilitates staying in touch with people. Most relationships fade not because we stop caring but because we forget. Reach Out makes sure you never have to regret losing touch again.
Contractscanner.xyz – a web app that scans crypto token contracts for scams and security vulnerabilities, because in crypto, one bad contract interaction can cost you everything.
Daily Blessings – a faith-based Chrome extension that gives you daily biblical quotes while helping you align your tasks with your faith.
Building these apps taught me more about product management than any course or book ever could.
I had to figure out what to build for real people, not hypothetical users in a case study. I had to prioritise ruthlessly when I hit technical constraints. I had to make UX decisions where every choice had a real trade-off. I had to ship something imperfect and iterate based on actual feedback.
And here’s the unexpected part: I built genuine empathy for engineers.
Debugging at midnight when something breaks and you can’t figure out why? That’s humbling. Discovering that a “simple change” requires refactoring half your codebase? Eye-opening. Spending three hours on a bug that turns out to be a single typo? Character-building.
Now when my engineering team says something will take longer than I expected, I get it. When they push back on a feature because of technical complexity, I understand. When estimates aren’t perfect, I’m more patient.
And in interviews or networking conversations, instead of talking about what I might build, I can show what I have built and discuss the specific challenges I faced and what I learned.
Empathy: It All Comes Together Here
Empathy isn’t just about being nice or understanding. It’s about genuinely knowing what someone else is going through because you’ve been there too.
When you’ve used AI to educate yourself about regulations, you empathise with your compliance team because you’ve struggled through that same dense documentation. When you’ve debugged code, you empathise with engineers because you know what that frustration feels like. When you’ve made difficult UX trade-offs, you empathise with designers because you understand there’s no perfect answer.
This empathy makes you better at your job. You ask more informed questions. You make more realistic requests. You understand why “no” is sometimes the right answer. You communicate more effectively because you actually understand what your stakeholders are dealing with.
Knowing this makes work more enjoyable. There’s something deeply satisfying about having real, substantive conversations with people instead of surface-level check-ins.
A Reality Check: AI Isn’t Magic
Before you get too excited and trust AI with everything, let me tell you a story.
I was trying to understand compliance requirements for our crypto platform. I asked ChatGPT why we needed to collect certain user details. It gave me a confident answer, cited specific regulations, and even referenced documentation.
The problem? It was completely wrong. The documents cited didn’t exist and it misinterpreted the information it was able to source. It had hallucinated most of it.
I switched to Gemini, asked the same question, and got accurate information with real, verifiable documentation. Crisis averted, but it was a reminder.
AI hallucinates. A lot. It will confidently give you false information, make up sources, and sometimes just be completely wrong. You have to verify everything, especially for critical decisions.
Also, different AI models are better at different things. ChatGPT might excel at creative tasks while Gemini is better for research. Claude might be better for coding while others are better for analysis. Experiment. Find what works for your specific use cases.
And remember: you’re still the expert. AI is a tool to help you think more deeply and move faster. But the intricacies of your product, your users, your organisation; that knowledge lives in you. Use AI to augment your judgment, not replace it.
Your Move
Here’s what I know: AI has fundamentally changed what’s possible for PMs. Whether you’re just starting out, switching careers, or looking to level up after years in the role, these tools can accelerate your growth in ways that simply weren’t possible two years ago.
But knowing that doesn’t matter if you don’t do anything with it.
So here’s my challenge: pick one area (education, optimisation, or innovation) and commit to one month of focused experimentation. Build something. Learn something new. Optimise one workflow. Just start.
You’ll probably feel uncomfortable at first. You might create some garbage. That’s fine. That’s part of it.
But a month from now, you’ll look back and be surprised at how much you’ve learned. Six months from now, you’ll work differently. A year from now, you might have built something you’re genuinely proud of.
The tools are here. The opportunity is here. What are you waiting for?
Connect with me on LinkedIn, I’d love to hear what you build or learn. And if you want to see what’s possible when you combine PM thinking with AI execution, check out Daily Blessings, contractscanner.xyz, and Reach Out – Stay Connected.
