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AI Product Strategy and Model Choice

Evaluating AI Vendors Interview Questions

How to buy AI well: testing a vendor on your hardest cases instead of their demo, checking quality claims, and judging the risk if their model provider changes terms. Asked of AI PMs, consultants and procurement roles.

  • 23 questions with model answers
  • 1 foundational · 10 intermediate · 12 advanced

Foundational Evaluating AI Vendors Questions

  1. List the ten questions you would ask every AI vendor before a pilot.Concept

Intermediate Evaluating AI Vendors Questions

  1. How do you evaluate a vendor's quality claims without running your own eval?Case
  2. Describe the data handling questions you would put to a vendor on behalf of your security team.Case
  3. Explain the risk of a vendor whose product is a thin layer over a public API.Concept
  4. What is the right pilot length and success criteria for an AI vendor evaluation?Concept
  5. How do you evaluate a vendor's roadmap credibility?Concept
  6. Describe the integration questions that determine real total cost.Concept
  7. Describe the difference between evaluating a vendor and evaluating a model.Concept
  8. How do you test a vendor's product on your hardest cases rather than their demo cases?Case
  9. How do you evaluate the support and incident response terms of an AI vendor?Concept
  10. A vendor's benchmark shows 98 percent accuracy. What do you ask next?Case

Advanced Evaluating AI Vendors Questions

  1. Design the pilot you would run to evaluate two competing AI vendors.Case
  2. What contractual terms matter specifically for AI vendors and not for other software?Concept
  3. How do you assess a vendor's model dependency and what happens if their provider changes terms?Concept
  4. What does a good vendor eval report look like and what should make you suspicious?Artifact critique
  5. How do you compare vendors whose pricing models are structurally different?Calculation
  6. What should you ask about a vendor's eval methodology?Concept
  7. How do you handle a vendor who will not disclose which model they use?Case
  8. Explain how to negotiate around usage-based pricing uncertainty.Calculation
  9. What exit criteria should be in the contract from day one?Concept
  10. Build the vendor scorecard you would take to a procurement committee.Artifact critique
  11. What does vendor lock-in look like when the vendor holds your embeddings?Concept
  12. Run me through your vendor evaluation for a category I name.Interview

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