Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Daniel Shenfeld
Aug 8, 2019 · 5 min read
While these accomplishments are rightfully generating enormous buzz and inspiring
entrepreneurs and investors, most of them lack a specific business application. If AI is
in fact a transformative technology, it raises a big question: How can your company use
AI to create actual business value, today?
To understand this question, we must first answer a more fundamental one: what kind
of products can you build with AI that you can’t build without it?
The answer is simple. With AI, you can build products that make decisions.
Decisions, decisions
Many products use rules to make decisions. But rules are just decisions that someone
else made for the product to follow. There’s nothing wrong with that, though over time
many rules-based products get increasingly frustrating: ever tried calling an airline or a
bank?
https://towardsdatascience.com/4-product-driven-steps-to-an-ai-roadmap-c30d1096aa86 1/5
5/2/2020 4 Product-Driven Steps to an AI Roadmap - Towards Data Science
Most meaningful decisions just can’t be summarized by a neat set of rules. AI products
are special because they can make such complex decisions. Here are some examples:
“I recommend approving this loan despite a lower credit score than normally
required”
“Here is the plan for today’s fitness class based on your goals and recent
performance”
The transformative piece here is that without AI, a product can’t make these decisions,
so humans have to make them. That means that it’s not a product, it’s a service. The
examples above are services provided by security guards, credit analysts, and fitness
instructors respectively.
How can you apply this in practice to your company? Naturally, any AI product involves
many technical aspects including data collection, processing, and modeling, which are
the domain of data science and machine learning experts. But the business and
product management aspects of building an AI product are just as important, and can
be as tricky. Here are four steps to guide you through this process.
https://towardsdatascience.com/4-product-driven-steps-to-an-ai-roadmap-c30d1096aa86 2/5
5/2/2020 4 Product-Driven Steps to an AI Roadmap - Towards Data Science
Since AI products are about making decisions, start by mapping the decisions
surrounding your product. Are they being made by rules or by humans? What
information is needed to make them? What would be the value of the product making
some of these decisions by itself?
Consider also decisions that are currently not being made. These are cases that the
product treats equally, even though there may be room for personalization or nuance.
Think about another process of acquiring decisional power: professional growth. How
does a line cook become an executive chef? Certainly not by just declaring them the
chef one day. In the same manner, you can’t deploy an AI solution out of the box and
expect to have a “smart product”.
On the other hand, a cook doesn’t turn into a chef by getting really good at chopping
lettuce, even if you let them decide how finely to chop it. Similarly, if your AI use cases
are limited to a few incremental, siloed applications you will not be realizing
meaningful value from AI.
https://towardsdatascience.com/4-product-driven-steps-to-an-ai-roadmap-c30d1096aa86 3/5
5/2/2020 4 Product-Driven Steps to an AI Roadmap - Towards Data Science
A good mentor makes decisions in a reasoned manner, even if they can’t be fully
explained by simple considerations or rules. The same holds for AI. Take for example
an AI solution that automates some of the work of an employee. If a cumbersome
process can force the employee to make a bad decision or take measures to sidestep it,
the result will be poor or partial data and an unsuccessful AI product. This is a common
challenge that requires updating processes and workflows before an AI solution can be
developed, regardless of how much data you currently have.
Digital Transformation
https://towardsdatascience.com/4-product-driven-steps-to-an-ai-roadmap-c30d1096aa86 5/5