Software products benefit from short development cycles coupled with frequent feedback. The same is true for building with AI. Rapid prototyping, user experimentation, the data and security constraints you may face, and the volatile nature of LLMs in particular make experimentation and reorientation of your product a feature rather than a bug of the AI product development cycle, illustrated in Figure 3-1.
Figure 3-1. A sketch of the development cycle for AI products; the cycle can be repeated hundreds of times before the AI team arrives at a viable product
To ensure that your project stays on track, this cycle consists of several iterations of defining the use case, building a solution, experimenting with it, and evaluating the results, after which the cycle begins again. To help us get comfortable with this way of working, in this chapter I want to take you on a guided tour of the steps in the AI development lifecycle.
An Exemplary Case Study: Building a News Digest App
To understand the AI product development lifecycle, let’s consider the following hypothetical case. An online news platform is experiencing a dwindling number of subscribers. They know they’re up against a powerful competitor: social media channels are increasingly taking over the role of traditional news media by being the first place people go to find out what’s ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month, and much more.
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
