Beyond Features: How AI is Redefining the Product Manager’s Role

In this insightful episode of Product Voices, JJ Rorie talks with Gopikrishnan Anilkumar, Principal Product Manager at Amazon and member of the Forbes Technology Council, about how artificial intelligence is transforming the craft of product management.

Gopikrishnan shares his journey from traditional software product management to leading AI-driven teams at major companies like Amazon, Walmart, and Goldman Sachs. Together, JJ and Gopikrishnan explore what remains constant in great product management—customer empathy, communication, structured thinking, and stakeholder alignment—and what’s changing fast as AI becomes central to how products are built, learned from, and improved.

Listeners will learn how AI product managers differ from traditional ones, not because they code or build models, but because they design experiences that learn and evolve. Gopikrishnan explains how metrics shift (from satisfaction and revenue to latency, model performance, and hallucination rates), how teams expand to include machine learning scientists and evaluators, and why “being AI-aware” is now an essential product skill.

Topics Covered:

• The evolution from traditional to AI product management
• Why PM fundamentals—empathy, communication, alignment—never go out of style
• How AI changes metrics, responsibility, and stakeholder complexity
• Designing for trust, safety, and explainability in AI experiences
• The mindset shift from building features to architecting experiences
• The experimental nature of AI product work (build, test, learn, repeat)
• Why you don’t need to be a machine learning expert to be an AI PM
• How every PM will soon interact with AI in some form
• Advice for PMs transitioning into AI and for new PMs entering the field

Key Quotes:

“AI product managers are not building a feature. You are building experiences — you’re an experience architect.” 

“Being AI-aware will soon be one of the key strengths of a product manager.”

“You don’t need to be a machine learning expert. You need curiosity, learning agility, and strong PM fundamentals.”

Takeaways:

• Trust and responsibility are the new pillars of AI-driven product management.
• Product management is evolving from control to influence — guiding systems that learn and adapt.
• Continuous experimentation and iteration are essential in AI environments.
• AI literacy is becoming as foundational as digital or mobile literacy once was.