How AI Is Changing Product Decisions: A Fireside Chat at Booking Holdings

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Ady Rugina is the person who introduced me to Claude. I later returned the favor by showing him Claude Code. We’ve been bouncing ideas off each other ever since — he’s one of those people whose thinking I genuinely respect, part mentor, part sparring partner. So when I heard he was speaking at a fireside chat in Bucharest about how AI is changing product decisions, there was no question I’d be there.

The panel you didn’t expect

The event was organized by Product Makers Romania and Booking Holdings Romania, hosted at their U Center office on Calea Serban Voda. Over 60 product professionals showed up on a Tuesday evening. The format was a fireside chat moderated by Albert Cristea (Director of Products at Clever Craft), with three panelists who couldn’t have come from more different product worlds:

Fraud prevention. M&A. Consulting. Three completely different contexts, all trying to figure out how AI changes the way they make product decisions. That’s what made this panel worth showing up for. It wasn’t another “AI will change everything” talk. It was people from specific, unglamorous corners of product work sharing how AI actually shows up in their day-to-day.

What the speakers actually said

The panel tackled the top-voted questions from the audience, and the conversation went far beyond roadmaps and hype. Here’s what stuck with me.

Product is the new bottleneck. AI is accelerating development at a speed that’s exposing how slow product decisions can be. Roles are merging — PMs are expected to vibe-code, developers need a stronger product mindset, and the middle management layer is thinning as stakeholders execute on their own. As Vaibhav put it: “As development is moving at an unprecedented speed… we (Product) are becoming the new bottleneck.”

Bad AI output usually means bad context. In many cases, poor AI results come down to how we use the tools. Either we don’t provide enough context, or we force AI to follow workflows designed for a pre-AI world instead of focusing on outcomes. George nailed this: “Don’t try to force existing, non-AI, processes into a new AI workflow or solution.”

Industry knowledge is your competitive advantage. George shared a thought-provoking take: “Creativity isn’t evenly distributed among individuals; it does not follow a clean normal distribution… like intelligence does.” When AI tools are widely accessible, what differentiates people is pattern recognition and deep domain knowledge. Vaibhav added that “while we were working with ML and statistical models before LLMs, AI has now been an absolute game-changer for complex fields like fraud detection and prevention.”

Succeeding means learning to unlearn. To thrive in this new reality, we need to let go of some of the ways we work today. It means actively choosing to be at the forefront of this transformation rather than being left behind by it. Ady summarised this mindset best: “Learn continuously… use the tools at a level that makes you uncomfortable.”

The part after the panel

The formal Q&A ran until about 8 PM, and then came the part I actually look forward to most at these events: networking. The conversations that happen during these sessions are consistently more valuable than anything said on stage. Not because the panel wasn’t good. It was. But because one-on-one conversations let you go deeper, ask the dumb questions, and find out what people actually think versus what they say with a microphone in front of them.

This is also why in-person events still matter. I’ve attended plenty of webinars and virtual panels. They’re fine. But they don’t give you the hallway conversations, the “oh wait, you work on that too?” moments, or the simple act of sharing a table with strangers who turn out to be dealing with the same problems you are.

Showing up is the strategy

March 2026 was shaping up to be a packed month for me (and it delivered), but this event on the 3rd set the tone early. It reminded me that the best way to stay sharp in product is not reading another framework article on LinkedIn. It’s showing up, listening to people who think differently, and staying curious about how the same technology lands in completely different contexts.

If Product Makers or Booking Holdings organize something similar again, do yourself a favor and go. Even on a Tuesday evening. Especially on a Tuesday evening.

Thanks to Vaibhav, Ady, and George for a brilliant fireside chat, and to Booking Holdings for hosting. Extra kudos to Albert for the facilitation and to George for his thought-provoking contributions.