As AI eats more of the product development lifecycle, human value will concentrate in vision and strategy rather than execution — because strategy requires weighing messy, non-obvious inputs like team dynamics and competitive positioning, and AI only produces good strategy when heavily steered by a human.
Adam argues human brains remain most valuable for vision and strategy — defining goals, constraints, and judgment calls — because AI strategy output is only good when a human steers it with the right context and constraints. ✦ AI generated
Adam Mosseri · Lenny's Podcast · 2026-07-09 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 24:05
“Where do you think human brains will continue to be most valuable as AI continues to eat more and more of that product development life cycle?”
Taste like we talked about, judgment particularly around strategy — you might get feedback from an AI on a strategy but you're not asking an AI to come up with a strategy anytime soon... I think of vision as an articulation of the world or the state of the product you want to get to. Then I think of strategy as an opinionated path to achieve that vision.
verbatim transcript · starts at 24:05
24:05taste like we talked about um judgment particularly around strategy right like you're you're not you might get feedback from an AI on a strategy but you're not asking an AI to come up with a strategy anytime soon or if you are then it's within the context of bounds you set so here's my goal here's my vision here are my constraints here's my job here's my budget I think that you know it looks
24:28more like management right like you are trying to define what success looks like decide how prescriptive you want to be about the path to success and then giving feedback along the way and that is its own craft you know and you it'll be interesting to see how Matt you know you know some of the same dynamics come up like I believe that if you are too prescriptive as a leader with a team you
24:55end up stifling good ideas but if you're too open-ended sometimes teams just waste time um going in the wrong direction. And so that level of autonomy you give a team like maybe that applies to, you know, agents in the future. Um, particularly when we're talking not just about building something, but deciding what you build in the first place. But I think of I think of vision as an
25:20articulation of the world or the or the state of the product you want to get to. Then I think of strategy is an opinionated path to achieve that vision. If a strat strategy can't be like be the best or be amazing. It has to be controversial that you have to be a reasonable person should be able to disagree with it because otherwise you're probably just trying to compete
25:44on raw execution and I think there both vision and strategy I think are going to be where our brains are spending a lot of our more and more of our cycles and I think less on on execution. Something I have always thought is AI should be incredibly good at strategy. Because you would think here's the market, here's all the information on the market, our competitors, our metrics, our numbers,
- ·AI absorbs more of product development execution
- ·Human value concentrates in vision and strategy
- ·Strategy needs judgment on messy, non-obvious inputs
- ·Vision: articulation of desired product state
- ·Strategy: opinionated path to reach that vision
- ·Both require human taste and judgment
- ·AI strategy output is only as good as human steering
- ·Humans must supply context, goals, and constraints
- ·You ask AI for feedback, not for the strategy itself