Build vs buy vs fine-tune AI models for product managers

Deciding to build vs buy vs fine-tune AI models is the biggest choice a product manager makes when launching a feature. This decision dictates your timeline and budget. Using a housing metaphor, we break down the differences between renting an API, renovating via fine-tuning, and building from scratch. Many managers mistakenly believe fine-tuning teaches new facts, but it only adjusts style and format. For new knowledge, you need retrieval augmented generation. We explore a legal summarizer example to show when fine-tuning is right for output formatting. You will learn a framework to evaluate options, starting with API prompts and tracking friction before committing to expensive training. In this lesson: - The housing metaphor for APIs and pretraining - Why fine-tuning teaches format not knowledge - Combining fine-tuning with live databases - Tracking API friction before upgrading U2xAI Academy - AI skills for product managers.