Erik on product management and such
The limits to language as an interface
In the Summer of 2023 I gave a lecture at New York University Shanghai where I examined the idea that all apps would soon be replaced by a single, universal chatbot. In January of the same year, Microsoft had bought 49% of OpenAI, partially because of their then goal to build Bing into a Super App inspired by WeChat that would replace Google Search and let you book hotels and shop for various products. Incidentally, pretty much what OpenAI just launched in October 2025, with Shopify integrations and their ChatKit.
That’s also why this post is relevant again. As a product manager, my role isn’t to hype up new technology but to examine it carefully and understand its limitations so that I can understand what experiences are feasible and actually create value for users, and what experiences should never be built, or what simply works better as a traditional graphical interface.