3.6 Using vs. Adopting AI

Most PMMs who’ve “adopted AI” are still running the exact same broken process they always did — write one MSD draft alone, then bring it to review — just with the robots helping them type faster. Same linear path: draft, defend, revise, repeat. Same sunk cost by the time anyone else sees it. That’s using AI. A faster horse and cart. The shape of the work hasn’t changed, just the speed of one step in it.

Adopting AI Asks a Different Question

Don’t write one MSD. Write five fast versions, each making a different bet — one leans into category creation, one plays it safe and competitive, one leans on customer voice and pain, one is unapologetically technical for a PLG audience. AI can spin up rough but indicative versions of all five in the time it used to take to grab a coffee.

Then, instead of a review meeting where you defend your one bet, you get quick reactions on all five from Sales, Product, your GM, maybe a few trusted customers — before you’ve spent a minute polishing prose. You’re no longer asking “is this good?” You’re asking “which of these is even worth being good at?” That’s a different question, and it’s one you couldn’t afford to ask when every draft cost days of time.

The Real Shift Isn’t Speed

It’s that AI makes exploration cheap enough to run in parallel instead of committing in sequence. Once exploration is cheap, you start asking questions you never would have bothered asking before: Could this be a category of one? What if the ICP isn’t who we think it is? What if the real story is the one Sales keeps telling on calls that never made it into any deck? Those aren’t faster versions of old questions — they’re new destinations you couldn’t see from the old road.

The Part AI Still Can’t Do

None of this means the human leaves the room. AI is a vibe engine — brilliant at simulating five different tones, five narrative bets, five personas reacting to your positioning. It can’t know which one is actually true, which one holds up under a hard question from a skeptical VP, which one has the emotional resonance that makes a buyer lean forward. That’s still you — the 20% that was always the actual job. Zero-Trust fact-checking still applies to every one of those drafts: each is a hypothesis, not a fact, until you’ve verified it against real customers.

The PMMs who just use AI get a faster version of a process that was already limiting them. The ones who adopt it get permission to ask “what else is possible” before spending two weeks finding out the hard way.

Full post: You’re Using AI, but You Haven’t Adopted It … Yet. →