4 free questions from a 20-question segment. Get the full 100 →

Q41. When would you choose RAG over fine-tuning for a knowledge-base product? Walk me through the decision.

• Type: Case | Difficulty: Medium
• What they're testing: Whether you understand the actual tradeoffs or just parrot buzzwords. Real answer digs into cost, latency, and maintenance burden.
• Framework hint:
  • Data freshness needs — RAG wins when knowledge updates weekly
  • Factuality requirements — RAG lets you cite sources
  • Cost per query — retrieval overhead vs training cost
  • Engineering complexity — vector DB, chunking, ranking
  • Maintenance — retrain vs re-index

Q48. Your product uses GPT-4 via API. What happens when OpenAI has an outage — how do you design for it?

• Type: Case | Difficulty: Hard
• What they're testing: Vendor risk mitigation for AI dependencies. Real senior AI PMs think about this before it happens.
• Framework hint:
  • Fallback model ready to swap
  • Graceful degradation of AI-dependent flows
  • Feature flags
  • User-facing status communication
  • Cost tradeoff — hot vs cold standby

Q53. Your team wants to use a new AI startup's product because it's cutting-edge. What's your concern list?

• Type: Case | Difficulty: Easy
• What they're testing: Whether you push back on cutting-edge for cutting-edge's sake. AI startups fail fast.
• Framework hint:
  • Funding + runway — 18 months?
  • Reversibility of swap
  • Data lock-in if shutdown
  • Enterprise readiness — SLAs, security, compliance
  • Roadmap dependency risk

Q58. Would you use an AI agent framework or write orchestration yourself?

• Type: Case | Difficulty: Hard
• What they're testing: 2025-current debate. Agent frameworks are maturing but often over-abstract.
• Framework hint:
  • Orchestration complexity — simple chains don't need frameworks
  • Team AI/ML expertise
  • Debugging: custom vs framework internals
  • Iteration speed — swap components
  • Production reliability of many frameworks

🔓 16 more questions in this segment alone — including vendor evaluation design, multi-model routing, and healthcare-grade build vs buy calls.