AI can help you build faster. It can’t tell you what’s worth building.
AI can help you build faster. It can’t tell you what’s worth building.  
Podcast: Insights Unlocked
Published On: Mon Sep 14 2026
Description: Episode web page: https://bit.ly/4ywaHhh Episode summary In this episode of Insights Unlocked, Mike Mace, Director of Solution Marketing at UserTesting, talks with veteran product leader, author, and executive coach Rich Mironov about what AI-powered development really means for product teams—and why dramatically faster coding doesn’t automatically translate into better products, happier customers, or more revenue. Rich argues that as AI removes engineering constraints, the bigger challenge becomes deciding what is actually worth building. He explores the risks of “cognitive surrender,” where teams equate faster output with better outcomes, and explains why product management, UX research, customer discovery, business judgment, and taste become more important—not less—as organizations gain the ability to build at unprecedented speed. He also challenges the growing enthusiasm for synthetic users, warning that plausible AI-generated feedback can reinforce what teams already believe rather than uncover the unexpected insights that emerge from conversations with real customers. The conversation also examines why “10x coding speed” won’t produce 10x revenue, how AI shifts bottlenecks from engineering toward customer adoption and go-to-market execution, and why product managers may need to become more “barbell shaped”—spending more time understanding meaningful customer problems at the front end and turning products into business results at the other. Rich also shares ideas from his book Money Stories, including why product teams need to communicate the financial value of their work in language executives understand. You’ll learn Why faster AI-assisted coding doesn’t necessarily create better products or more revenue How “cognitive surrender” can cause teams to prioritize output over customer and business outcomes Why human discovery, judgment, empathy, and taste become more valuable as building gets easier The risks of replacing conversations with real customers with synthetic users Why product waste is fundamentally different from engineering waste How AI shifts product bottlenecks toward discovery, customer adoption, sales, and go-to-market execution Why product managers may need to become more “barbell shaped” in an AI-driven environment How “money stories” can help product teams connect their work to revenue and business impact Resources and links Rich on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/richmironov/) Rich’s Product Bytes (https://www.mironov.com/) and Substack (https://richmironov.substack.com/)  The Art of Product Management (https://www.amazon.com/Art-Product-Management-Lessons-Innovator/dp/1439216061) Money Stories: Communicating the Value of Product Work (https://www.amazon.com/Money-Stories-Communicating-Value-Product-ebook/dp/B0GJTS2CW6) Our past interview with Rich on product waste and how to prevent it (https://www.usertesting.com/blog/how-prevent-product-waste) Mike Mace on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemace/) Nathan Isaacs on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanisaacs/) Learn more about Insights Unlocked (https://www.usertesting.com/resources/podcast)