This told essay is based on a conversation with Rishabh Joli, 37, a senior program manager at Washington-based Microsoft. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
After moving to the US to pursue my MBA, I joined Microsoft in 2017 as a program manager.
I am currently a Senior PM and find my role extremely rewarding. My role involves developing product and feature ideas that improve the customer experience, as well as planning the product from development to shipping to customers. PM is like the glue that binds different teams across engineering, marketing, and business together to work on each project.
As AI tools become more prevalent, I'm excited about the potential this technology has to help me in my role. I consider myself an early adopter who has upskilled to bring AI into my toolbox as a new tool.
Here's how AI helps me both at work and in my personal life. These are relatively easy to reproduce.
In my role at Microsoft, AI gives me back my time to focus on more meaningful tasks.
I earned a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science Engineering in my native India and then moved to the US in 2015 to pursue my MBA. I also spent 4 years working as a software engineer in India for a company that uses AI and machine learning in some form before the LLM came along. I couldn't call myself an AI expert, but I understood how the technology worked.
As AI tools have become more commonplace, I've been using them to make my job faster and easier.
PMs like me spend countless hours in meetings. When I first joined Microsoft, I manually created notes to help me understand what I needed to do later on. Now we can use AI tools to take notes, giving us much more time to focus on more meaningful tasks like strategic thinking and prioritization.
As a PM, one of my jobs is to create documents that clarify goals and priorities for the engineering team. AI tools can help you reduce the time you spend on your first draft. Then, review, edit, and shape the AI-generated content yourself, applying your own judgment and experience before sharing the document with your team.
AI supports your love of leisure podcasting
Jolie started her podcast with her wife in 2022. Provided by Rishabh Jolie
At work I use the tools available at Microsoft, but in my personal life I like to experiment and experiment with a wide range of tools, from ChatGPT and Perplexity to Gemini.
I started a podcast called ”In 2022, I will host “Curious Souls” with my wife, who works in the technology industry. There, we'll talk with guest speakers about their passion for product management, AI, fitness, and other topics. That's my hobby.
It took a lot of time to ask the PM what he wanted to ask, research the theme, and come up with ideas for the guests.
Now you can speed up the process by instructing your LLM to search Reddit for hot topics that PMs are talking about and ask the chatbot to generate a script on the topic of your choice. You can also generate an audio clip of your script to listen to when you go to the gym and think about how your podcast would sound if you used that script.
I still spend 4-5 hours every weekend on podcasts, but thanks to AI I can accomplish much more with that time than before. You can now spend more time on personal activities such as editing content, adjusting questions, and spending time with your family.
Experimenting with AI in my personal projects has helped me understand where AI can and cannot help. For example, we found that when we used AI to generate podcast scripts, it sometimes produced inaccurate output, such as placeholder links that didn't actually exist. So I usually treat the AI output as a starting point and always check it.
As a result, they are becoming more intentional when using AI in their work, understanding when to rely on automation and when human judgment is essential. Before applying similar techniques professionally, I think it's worth trying out AI for low-risk projects outside of work, such as hobbies or travel planning.
PMs need to become proficient with AI, so it's better to start now
Jolly said he doesn't think AI will replace PMs. Provided by Rishabh Jolie
Instead of fearing AI, we decided to embrace it. In the future, I think PMs will be expected to know how to use AI to get things done faster.
Even with the introduction of AI, I think the core of the PM's role will still be to work closely with customers and solve problems. AI can improve our ability to solve these problems and give us suggestions on how to approach them, but humans will always be the ones making the decisions. It won't replace us, but it will be an essential tool to make our lives easier.
My advice to PMs is to embrace AI and really experiment with it, not just in your work but in your daily life. There is no way around this. The sooner you start, the sooner you will reap the benefits.
Do you have a story to share about how you're using AI in your work? Contact this reporter at: ccheong@businessinsider.com
