Categories: Business

Microsoft CTO says product managers will help train AI agents

Product managers must be “experts in the field” in AI agents, said Microsoft technology director.

Kevin Scott said on an episode of Twenty Minute Podcast VC published Monday that product managers play a crucial role in setting up “feedback loops” to improve AI agents.

AI – AI agents that can act and make decisions independently – are a burning subject of technology and workforce. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said in January that “the aging AI age was here” and said last year that 50,000 people from Nvidia could work with 100 million agents. Sam Altman of Openai predicted that AI agents could start to enter the job market this year.

AI agents are intended to be digital colleagues or assistants to human workers in areas ranging from health care and management of the cybersecurity and customer service.

But for the moment, AI agents have nothing fundamental, said Scott.

“They obviously lack memory, which makes them terribly transactional,” said Scott. Even agents who have memory, he added, have a very limited form.

Scott said he hoped that AI agents will be able to remember user interactions over time, allowing them to “comply” more to user preferences.

This type of memory would give agents “abstraction and compositionality”, which makes them feel less like simple chatbots and more like intelligent digital colleagues, he added.

Finally, he said, the objective is that AI agents manage more and more complex tasks-as a real colleague would.

Role of product managers

In the world of technology, product managers have been mentioned – both affectionately and critical – as “mini -CEOs” of the products they supervise.

They act as a bridge between engineers, sales teams, customer service and other departments, ensuring that products align with user needs.

But the role became polarizing, reported Amanda Hoover by Business Insider in November. Some technology workers argue that product managers add little value.

According to Ziprecruit, the average product manager in the United States earns around $ 160,000. Software engineers, on average, on average about $ 147,000, and technological marketing specialists on average about $ 87,000.

Microsoft wants to increase the number of engineers compared to product or programs managers, Ashley Stewart BI reported last month. Other Businesses like Airbnb and Snap rendunate the need for product managers.

The call to managers to follow the “founding mode” – a concept invented by the co -founder of the Y Paul Graham combiner and praised by the CEO of Airbnb, Brian Chesky – has leaders wonder if they should delegate product decisions to product managers.

In 2023, Chesky merged product management with marketing, and Snap told information the same year that she dismissed 20 product manager to help accelerate the company’s decision -making.

Others believe that the influence of product managers will only grow in the AI era.

“The future really belongs to product managers,” said Frank Fusco, product manager who has become CEO of a software company called Silicon Society, in BI in November.

While AI becomes more capable of managing coding and other engineering tasks, Fusco said that it was an opportunity for product leaders to play an even greater role.

Investors and leaders wishing to capitalize on AI and consumers are always skeptical, the demand for product managers will only increase because they will help fill the gap, he added.

businessinsider

William