In the absence of a fire alarm, what other observable signals or patterns might we look out for that this perennial line-crossing predicates harm?
Are there behaviors or events we can monitor for in the world that, having crossed some red line, a real threat is emerging as a result of some model capability?
Or are defining the red lines the only warning we have, understanding that we cross them at our own peril because we can only assess the threat post hoc?
My own struggle with this sentiment—as a product manager, no less! -- is that this implies that good judgment sits squarely in the product manager’s domain and that somehow this excuses designers or engineers from exercising good judgment.
I can accept the idea that good judgment is an aspect of product management, insofar as a key function of product management is improving decision quality, but product management is an activity that doesn’t have to be bound to a specific role or individual, just as writing code doesn’t have to be bound to the software engineer role.
Product management as a skill-that-improves-decision-quality certainly won’t go away, and I agree with you that good judgment will be more important than ever as execution gets cheaper and cheaper. But what a product manager looks like as an individual who is paid to be a product manager will either probably cease to exist soon or look at least vastly different because I just don’t think there’s defensible ROI in the typical day-to-day outputs of the role anymore.