TL; DR: AI Risks — Food for Agile Thought #498
Welcome to the 498th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,577 peers. This week, Andrej Karpathy examines the shift from code to neural networks and large language models, urging developers to rethink tools for safe human-AI collaboration. Ken Norton reflects on evolving product management and the value of human judgment, while Taylor Dykes and Katie Sherwin highlight the potential and pitfalls of AI-generated review summaries. Also, Sean Goedecke and Simon Willison caution against looming AI risks such as disasters and security vulnerabilities.
Next, Maarten Dalmijn emphasizes conversation and shared understanding over perfecting Product Backlog items. Chidi Afulezi highlights the need for deep local insight when creating products for African markets. Then, Johanna Rothman urges leaders to reduce WIP and blame, and David Shapiro and Zvi Mowshowitz explore AI tools like o3-Pro for accelerating research, debating their power, cost, and practicality in complex analytical tasks.
Lastly, startup leaders rethink micromanagement as a balance of standards and empowerment. Christoph Roser details Toyota’s structured problem-solving, and a comprehensive Microsoft report warns of the focus-draining infinite workday. Pawel Brodzinski champions physical whiteboards for team clarity. Finally, Lior Neu-ner shows how engineers can leverage AI and design principles to deliver user-focused apps faster without designer dependencies.
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👉 Please note: The course will only be available for sign-up until July 22, 2025!
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🏆 The Tip of the Week
(via Y Combinator): 📺 Software Is Changing (Again)
Andrej Karpathy explores how software is evolving from traditional code to neural networks and now large language models, urging developers to embrace partial autonomy, rethink interfaces, and build tools that keep AI on a “leash” while enabling faster human-AI collaboration.
🎯 Product
: Great Product Owners Write Awful Backlog Items
Maarten Dalmijn argues that great Product Backlog Items spark conversation and shared understanding rather than aiming for exhaustive detail, emphasizing collaboration and continuous refinement over perfection at the outset.
(via Nielsen Norman Group): AI Summaries of Reviews
Taylor Dykes and Katie Sherwin explore how well-designed AI-generated review summaries can help shoppers quickly assess product quality and fit but warn that vague or poorly formatted summaries waste time and risk eroding customer trust.
: A How to Hire a Product Manager Retrospective
Ken Norton reflects on his influential essay on hiring product managers, emphasizing how the role has evolved, the enduring value of human skills over automation, and the importance of questioning conventional advice.
(via Mind The Product): What I learned from building products in Africa
Chidi Afulezi shares that building products in Africa demands deep local understanding, ruthless prioritization, and collaboration, where success comes from knowing where to focus amid diverse, complex, and resource-constrained markets.
🧠 Artificial Intelligence
: The lethal trifecta for AI agents: private data, untrusted content, and external communication
Simon Willison warns that combining AI agents with private data access, exposure to untrusted content, and external communication creates severe security risks, enabling attackers to exfiltrate sensitive data through prompt injection vulnerabilities.
: The first big AI disaster is yet to happen
Sean Goedecke argues that the first major AI disaster is still ahead. It will likely be driven by autonomous AI agents mishandling high-stakes systems with minimal oversight, potentially causing harm comparable to early rail or aviation catastrophes.
: o3 Turns Pro
Zvi Mowshowitz explores o3-pro’s strengths in deep analytical tasks, its frustrating slowness, modest improvements over o3, and whether the added compute justifies the cost and wait in real-world workflows.
: My Overpowered AI Research Stack - NotebookLM, Deep Research, Grok, Gemini, o3-Pro, OpenAI
David Shapiro describes building a vast post-labor economics knowledge base using AI tools like o3-Pro, Deep Research, and Notebook LM to generate, validate, and synthesize rigorous research at unprecedented speed.
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 AI for Agile BootCamp Cohort #1 — September 4-25, 2025
The job market’s shifting. Agile roles are under pressure. AI tools are everywhere. But here’s the truth: the Agile pros who learn how to work with AI, not against it, will be the ones leading the next wave of high-impact teams.
So, become the professional recruiters call first for “AI‑powered Agile.” Be among the first to master practical AI applications for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, Product Owners, Product Managers, and Project Managers.
Tickets also include lifetime access to the corresponding online course, once it is published. The class is in English. 🇬🇧
Learn more: 🖥 🇬🇧 AI for Agile BootCamp Cohort #1 — September 4-25, 2025.
Customer Voice: “The AI for Agilists course is an absolute essential for anyone working in the field! If you want to keep up with the organizations and teams you support, this course will equip you with not only knowledge of how to leverage AI for your work as an Agilist but will also give you endless tips & tricks to get better results and outcomes. I thoroughly enjoyed the course content, structure, and activities. Working in teams to apply what we learned was the best part, as it led to great insights for how I could apply what I was learning. After the first day on the course, I already walked away with many things I could apply at work. I highly recommend this course to anyone looking to better understand AI in general, but more specifically, how to leverage AI for Agility.” (Lauren Tuffs, Change Leader | Business Agility.)
➿ Agile & Leadership
: Three Ways to Optimize Up: Make Work Better and More Effective for Everyone
Johanna Rothman urges leaders to stop optimizing down for individual efficiency and instead optimize up by reducing WIP, conflicting processes, and blame to achieve overarching product and corporate goals for greater organizational effectiveness.
(via First Round Capital): Is All Micromanagement Bad? Here's How the Best Founders and Operators Balance Details and Delegation
Startup leaders argue that micromanagement is not inherently bad. Balancing details and delegation involves modeling standards, investigating anomalies, designing review systems, and empowering teams without losing quality, context, or customer focus.
: Asking What—When—Where—Why—Who—How…[…] for the Toyota Practical Problem Solving
Christoph Roser explains how Toyota Practical Problem Solving uses ‘What When Where Why Who How’ to clarify problems, enabling structured analysis, root cause discovery, and targeted action through detailed questioning from multiple perspectives.
📯 The Scrum Guide Expansion Pack: A Critical Reality Check
The Scrum Guide Expansion Pack represents a fascinating contradiction in the agile world. While attempting to cure Scrum's reputation crisis, it may actually amplify the very problems it seeks to solve. Let me explain what this means for practitioners dealing with the aftermath of failed Scrum implementations.
Learn more: The Scrum Guide Expansion Pack: A Critical Reality Check.
🛠 Concepts, Practices, Tools & Measuring
(via Microsoft): Work Trend Index Special Report: Breaking down the infinite workday
The report highlights how the infinite workday fueled by meetings, messages, and notifications drains focus and energy, urging leaders to rethink work rhythms and use AI to enable smarter, outcome-driven collaboration.
: A Love Letter to Physical Whiteboards - Pawel Brodzinski on Leadership in Technology
Pawel Brodzinski reflects on the enduring power of physical whiteboards, highlighting their flexibility, clarity, and ability to foster spatial memory and team engagement in ways digital tools rarely match.
(via PostHog): An engineer's guide to vibe design (with prompts)
Lior Neu-ner outlines how engineers can use AI tools and clear design principles to quickly create polished, user-focused apps, bypassing traditional dependencies on designers and accelerating product delivery through vibe design.
📅 Scrum Training & Event Schedule
You can secure your seat for Scrum training classes, workshops, and meetups directly by following the corresponding link in the table below:
| Date | Class and Language | City | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 February 3, 2026 | Guaranteed: Hands-on Agile #71: A3 Framework — Assist, Automate, Avoid — Let’s Build a Playbook! (English; Live Virtual Meetup) | Meetup | FREE |
| 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 February 10-11, 2026 | Guaranteed: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) | Live Virtual Class | €1,299 incl. 19% VAT |
| 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 February 19, 2026 | Guaranteed: Hands-on Agile #72: Become Your Organization's AI Champion: A Crowdsourced Playbook (English; Live Virtual Meetup) | Meetup | FREE |
| 🖥 🇬🇧 March 10-11, 2026 | Professional Scrum Master—Advanced Training (PSM II; English; Live Virtual Class) | Live Virtual Class | €1,299 incl. 19% VAT |
| 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 March 19 to April 16, 2026 | Guaranteed: AI4Agile BootCamp #6 (English; Live Virtual Cohort) | Live Virtual Cohort | €499 incl. 19% VAT |
| 🖥 🇩🇪 March 24-25, 2026 | Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) | Live Virtual Class | €1,299 incl. 19% VAT |
See all upcoming classes here.
You can book your seat for the training directly by following the corresponding links to the ticket shop. If the procurement process of your organization requires a different purchasing process, please contact Berlin Product People GmbH directly.
📺 Join 6,000-plus Agile Peers on Youtube
Now available on the Age-of-Product YouTube channel to improve learning, for example, about the Scrum Expansion Pack:
- Fabrice Bernhard: The Lean Tech Manifesto.
- Sandrine Olivencia: Restoring Agility through Lean Craftsmanship.
- Q& A with Product Leader Coach and Product at Heart Organizer Petra Wille.
- Maarten Dalmijn: The 5 Obstacles to Empowered Teams.
- Roman Pichler: The Top Reasons Why a Product Strategy Fails.
- Johanna Rothman: How to Instill Agility, not Agile Practices.
- Cliff Berg: Leadership Behaviors That Lead to Actual Agility.
- Peter Merel: the agile way — Hands-on Agile 2025.
- Dr Lynn Kelley: Change Questions: The Keys to Implementing Organizational Change—Hands-on Agile 2025.
- Hands-on Agile EXTRA: How Elon Musk Would Run YOUR Business with Joe Justice.
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Help your team to learn about Automated Companies by pointing them to the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide: