k i n o k a s t

Three weeks!
That’s how long it takes for most people to go from “AI is going to change everything” to quietly closing the tab and doing the work themselves.

To the NotebookLM (interactive research & AI voice chat)

English

A Microsoft study tracking 300,000 employees found a pattern: excitement spikes when people first use AI tools, then crashes. Outputs feel generic. The AI sounds confident but gets things wrong.

Why do people give up so fast?

This isn’t just a tech problem (e.g. the first-off very low quality of the usability of many AI tools or first chatbots).
It’s a symptom of something much bigger — and it affects how we work, how we lead, and maybe even who we are.

Are You Actually Succeeding — Or Just Looking Like It?

Are You Actually Succeeding — Or Just Looking Like It?
What AI adoption reveals about how we’ve confused performance with achievement, read this short essay and view and use these slides to build up your own presentations in class on your working conversational sessions.

For the forever learning under us, future is now.

View the slides (PDF)

Building a Real World: A Guide to AI, Integrity, and Authentic Success

Imagine the world as a massive, complex Lego set. To build something that lasts, you need the right bricks, a solid manual, and—most importantly—the judgment to know when the pieces don’t quite fit.

The human goal is to distinguish between statistical efficiency and authentic truth.

1. Training Your “AI Chatpet”: The 201 Management Level

Many people treat AI like a magic wand, but the sources suggest a better metaphor: treat it like a “capable but inexperienced intern” or otherwise a perhaps talented but quite ignorant “chatpet”?

“Chatpet” is here just a casual, phonetic way of calling AI apps like ChatGPT — OpenAI’s AI chatbot that millions of people now use daily for tasks like drafting emails, writing reports, or summarizing research.
The key insight is that the way you think about the tool matters as much as knowing how to use it.

Instead of treating it like a search engine that spits out answers, or a magic wand that does your work for you, think of it as a brilliant but brand-new intern: fast, eager, and surprisingly capable — but with zero judgment, no knowledge of your specific context, and a dangerous habit of sounding confident even when it’s completely wrong.

That mental shift changes everything about how you interact with it.

Most organizations fail because they stay at “Level 101″—basic prompting—and fall into the “crater of disappointment” when the AI gives generic or wrong answers. To succeed, you must move to Level 201: Applied Judgment. This involves:

• Task Decomposition: Don’t throw the whole Lego box at the AI. Break projects into “AI-appropriate chunks”.
• Quality Judgment: Knowing that AI can produce a perfect paragraph and a total hallucination in the same breath.
• Frontier Recognition: Identifying the “Jagged Frontier”—where the AI excels and where it fails miserably.
  

2. An example: The French Geopolitical Scientist, Pascal Boniface

Building a career in geopolitics requires more than just technical knowledge; it requires integrity. Pascal Boniface, sociologist and geopolitical expert, founder of IRIS (https://www.iris-france.org/en/), demonstrates that a successful path is often built on “chance encounters” and staying true to one’s adolescent ideals.

Boniface speaks openly about “class inhibition”—the feeling of illegitimacy when a “lower-middle-class” student enters elite circles like Science Po.

His solution was to build his own independent workshop, IRIS, to escape the “Analysis Disneyland” of mainstream media, where complex global issues are reduced to simple “good vs. evil” slogans. He remains proud that the adult he became is someone his adolescent self—motivated by a “soif de justice” (‘Thirst fo justice’)—would respect.

3. Avoiding the “Plastic City”: The Society of Fiction

Finally, we must beware of building a world that looks perfect but is hollow. We live in a “Society of Fiction,” where the goal isn’t “Success” (actual achievement), but “Successfulness” (the appearance of success measured by the number of views or “likes”).

This society is governed by “secret laws,” such as “Performative Belief” (pretending to believe in a narrative even if you know it’s false) and “Inverse Volume” (screaming louder about your values the less you actually believe in them).

When we realize our work is “factitious” or fake, it leads to “Ontological Burnout”—a metaphysical exhaustion where we lose the “why” behind our actions.

Your Final Insight: Quality Judgement is Key.

Whether you are managing an AI “chatpet,” * analyzing global conflicts, or building your personal life, success depends on the “judgment layer”—the human ability to distinguish between statistical efficiency and authentic truth.

Rather than treating your favourite Chatpet like a magic wand or a search engine, you should think of it as a brilliant but brand-new intern — fast, eager, and surprisingly capable — but with zero judgment, no knowledge of your specific context, and a dangerous habit of sounding confident even when it’s completely wrong…

* An “Chatpet” is a casual, phonetic way of calling AI apps like ChatGPT — OpenAI’s AI chatbot that millions of people use daily for tasks like drafting emails, writing reports, or summarising research.

This blog’s PDF reader below: Succes vs. Successfullness (The Bigger Game)