Foster: Thousands of startups will be built to replace customer support agents
Ben Foster · AI Predicts the Next Word. It Cannot Predict the Next Car. · Jul 20, 2023 · at 23:46
Ben Foster, product executive and co-founder of Profi, discusses near-term high-ROI generative AI applications versus complex strategic functions.
0:00 / 0:06exact quote · 6.4s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Thousands of companies are probably going to like get established using AI to try to replace customer support agents, right?”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Ben Foster
Foster: AI will shrink product teams but make top talent highly valuable
“And I think the same kind of thing is going to happen when it comes to product as well, which is there's going to be a need for fewer product people, but the very best are going to be worth their weight in platinum.”
Foster: AI will automate data-driven product decisions to eliminate human error
“AI is going to have a really big impact on product management as well, right? You know, because a lot of the decision making, which used to have to be human powered, human centered, can now be kind of like delegated to a machine, which might be able to make be…”
Foster: Generative AI is inherently derivative and cannot invent novel products
“Theoretically you're trying to build something in product that hasn't been built before. And yet the generative tools that exist out there are all derivative because it's trying to predict based on what's been seen already.”
Foster: Generative AI models cannot understand a product's core value proposition
“Whether it's chat GPT or any other, these other kind of like generative models, they, or AI systems, they don't have an underlying model of what the real kind of like good, like they don't have a model underneath of what A great product is. They're just trying…”
Foster: Human product managers would severely outperform AI in feature A/B tests
“I'd be really interested to see if you like did, you know, the ultimate AB test here and you generated a hundred new features for different products that were all kind of like AI generated as opposed to like good product manager generated who would outperform …”
Foster: Product managers should not worry about AI replacing them anytime soon
“I think that there's a situation in which the, you know, best product managers could ultimately be beaten once there's actually an underlying model behind these things down the road. But we're talking way in the future at this point, and I don't think that any…”