Show Notes
Like many product leaders in the technology space, Jackie Rocca took a somewhat circuitous path to that role. After beginning her career in management consulting with Bain, she earned her MBA at Stanford and then worked at Google, where she helped launch YouTube TV. Now, she serves as vice president of product at Slack, where she focuses on the collaboration platform’s Slack AI product. As a product leader, Jackie had continually heard from users that they were experiencing a common challenge: It was a struggle to keep up with the pace of information and prioritize where to focus their attention and energy. So she looked to AI as a potential source of solutions and is now leading a team that’s focused on launching AI-driven features to address user pain points. The Slack AI team’s work is already helping customers take advantage of the wealth of knowledge within Slack exchanges by providing features such as channel recaps, thread summaries, and the ability to ask questions to surface information that’s embedded within conversations. On this episode, Jackie describes how her team approaches new product design in the generative AI space and offers up some predictions for what lies ahead. Read the episode transcript here. Guest bio Jackie Rocca is vice president of product at Slack. In that role, she oversees the vision and execution of Slack AI, which brings generative AI natively and securely into the collaboration platform’s user experience. Rocca has delivered on a number of AI initiatives in her five years with the company and is now on a mission to help customers further accelerate their productivity and get even more value out of their conversations, data, and collective knowledge. Before joining Slack, Rocca spent more than six years as a product manager at Google, where she helped launch and grow YouTube TV. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Alanna Hooper. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
More from Me, Myself, and AI
What if artificial intelligence could connect the scattered knowledge across your organization and help you actually use it? Dropbox CTO Ali Dasdan joins Me, Myself, and AI to explain how the company is using AI to bring together information across files, apps, and platforms while navigating the challenges of security, permissions, and “context rot.” He also shares how Dropbox drove the adoption of AI coding tools to nearly 100% of its developers and why human review and guardrails still matter.
A time of crisis often requires the need for ongoing assistance, but many of us struggle with requesting help from others. GoFundMe CEO Tim Cadogan joins us to explain how the fundraising company is using artificial intelligence to make such times easier, drawing on lessons from tens of millions of fundraisers to help people tell their stories and mobilize their communities.
With the acquisition of the Caper cart, a technology-enabled shopping cart, grocery-delivery company Instacart began bridging the gap between online and in-person shopping. On today’s episode, David McIntosh, the company’s former chief connected stores officer, joins host Sam Ransbotham to share how physical AI is helping shoppers track their purchases, retailers manage inventory, and product manufacturers stock the right items at the right times.
Erik Brynjolfsson has a challenge for anyone worried about artificial intelligence: Stop asking what AI will do to us, and start asking what we will do with AI.
Today’s episode, the final one of Season 13, explores how Bank of America is preparing a massive global workforce for an AI future through upskilling and reskilling. Bernard Hampton, head of the financial institution’s Academy, explains how the learning and development organization focuses on workforce agility and a building combination of technical and soft skills.