LLM Adoption in the Enterprise

Chapter 2. Building an AI Product

As the sample projects in the previous chapter have shown, gaining a solid understanding of the technology is just the beginning of building with LLMs. This is true for any technology, but because of the complex and intimidating nature of these recently introduced models, a closer look in the context of AI in particular is warranted. So in this chapter, I want to explore the notion of an AI product and how you need to start thinking about the technology to build products that will drive your business forward.

What Is an AI Product?

An AI product is an application, a piece of software, or an actual physical product that uses the capabilities of one or more AI technologies to process data and deliver a specific user experience, coupled with a business outcome. When we talk about building with LLMs and AI in general, AI itself is not the product. Rather, it is the technology—often, the central technology—that powers the product. For example, the ChatGPT browser application is powered by an LLM. But it also consists of many other features, such as the chat interface, user verification, and some sort of memory component to store the previous conversation.

Product ownership is about understanding the process of developing a product from start to finish, and not losing sight of the end goal. To do this, it’s useful to adopt a “product mindset”—that is, a methodical approach to the project as a whole, as well as to its individual parts. In that mindset, ...