AI did not eliminate the product designer role. It reassigned it. Designers are moving from spec-makers to system architects, a structural shift in job function that has compounding effects on team composition, tooling, and deliverables.
The argument here is not that AI handles the grunt work while humans stay creative. It is that the nature of design authority itself is changing. Who owns the system logic, who defines the constraints AI operates within, and who audits the output: those are now design problems.
The full piece is worth reading for how it maps the before and after of the designer's actual day-to-day, not the aspirational version. If you manage a design team or sit on one, the specifics of what gets delegated and what gets elevated are the real story.
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