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. People give up.

This isn’t just a tech problem. 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 these slides in PDF

For the learning under us, young and old!

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.

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 a talented “chatpet”.

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, founder of IRIS, 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”—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.

The Takeaway: 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.