Rag vs fine tuning vs prompting for product managers

Deciding between Rag vs fine tuning vs prompting is a critical choice for product managers building AI features. Picking the wrong method can waste budget or cause inaccurate outputs. This lesson breaks down the cost and effort of each approach using an assistant metaphor. Prompting acts as a daily briefing to set style, while RAG serves as a company manual for looking up fresh facts. Fine tuning is like sending your assistant to a training course to change its core behavior and internal weights. You will learn how to build your AI stack slowly without overcomplicating day one. We cover when to max out your prompt, when to add retrieval augmented generation for dynamic data, and when to invest in training loops for specific behavioral shifts. In this lesson: - The assistant metaphor for AI learning methods - When to use prompting for style and tone - How RAG retrieves fresh facts from a manual - Why fine tuning changes core behavior - A simple strategy to build your AI stack U2xAI Academy - AI skills for product managers.