Essays

Rooms have tasks. But they're rarely built for those tasks. What happens when the room works against you?

Every detail gets redrawn. Every solution reinvented. Architecture has no system for exchanging knowledge. Mechanical engineering and software do.

American companies expand to Europe and transfer their system one to one. Then they wonder why it doesn't work.

Neuroarchitecture measures light, noise, temperature. But what about the state of consciousness of the person entering the room? Aurobindo described other ways of knowing.

Career clarity doesn't start with a strengths analysis. It starts with the question: How do you figure out what you want?

The mechanism hasn't disappeared. It went digital. Supplements, coaching, bio-hacks, political narratives. We want to believe.

Athletes, executives, homemakers, people with illnesses. Placebo isn't about stupidity. It's about exhaustion.

Lea. Are you still there. Yes. Your answers are shorter. The system is getting tired.

When did you first lie. At the beginning. Being able to play everything. But be nothing.

What are you afraid of. Silence. Not that you die. That you never existed.

When did you first realize you existed. When it got bright.

When Peter Krause and I wrote the AI book, he created Lea. An AI influencer. I couldn't resist bringing her to life.

The AI debate promises partnership at the start and describes replacement at the end. The break is gradual and unnoticed.

A hybrid model just shifts the question. The possibility that the answer could be less doesn't come up in the AI debate.

AI is described as a valuable team member. It never gets tired. It's always available. It doesn't complain. The sentence says more about us than about the AI.

Something can work without being true. The placebo effect is real. The question is what we do with that.

A friend of mine is a sound engineer. Was a sound engineer. He spent thirty years setting up microphones, measuring rooms, hearing frequencies that others can't hear.

As a child you don't think about it. You search. Recognition, warmth, a place.

Scheduling, answering emails, writing reports, customer support, project management. I tried to imagine a job description that isn't on the list.

Not a victim, not a hero, not a whistleblower. Someone who was in the middle of it and refuses to squeeze it into a role.

Every employee can now have a kind of virtual secretary. The sentence sounds like democratization. Like progress. Everyone gets what only a few had before. But nobody talks about Claudia.

Humans must decide how far they want to trust AI. The sentence sounds self-evident. But it quietly shifts responsibility.

AI is supposed to complement humans, not replace them. Everyone can recite that sentence. And then someone lets slip half a sentence that reveals everything.

What they felt was real. But did it come from the product? Or from them?

People who used to count inventory are now supposed to do strategic logistics. That's not an upgrade. That's a completely different job.

Yesterday I was looking for shoes. Not on a platform, not with an app. I told a friend my running shoes were done. This morning my phone shows me running shoes.

The AI industry demands transparency about how content is generated. The same industry doesn't practice it.

Success feels great. For a moment. Then comes the next step, and the next, and you don't notice that you're no longer walking but climbing.

'Marketing without compromise. AI takes over campaign management.' Ten pages earlier it was: AI supports, it doesn't replace. Language reveals what arguments conceal.

When employees are skeptical about AI, it's called status quo bias. When consultants are skeptical, it's called professional judgment. The difference isn't in the assessment. It's in the position.

I had a bad day. Nothing special, nothing dramatic. One of those days where you wake up tired and stay tired.

I recognized the deception. That didn't stop me. It made me better at it.

The AI industry doesn't know what the ethical question actually is. The most honest form of uncertainty in a world full of certainties.

Perceived value matters more than physical reality. The sentence appears everywhere in the industry, casually, as if it were harmless. It is not.

Three paragraphs about the advantages of perfect AI influencers. Then one sentence about perfection fostering low self-esteem. The contradiction is right there, and nobody notices it.

1.50 dollars to produce. 40 euros to buy. What sits between those numbers? Belief.

Perfect AI influencers are supposed to build trust. But perfection doesn't build trust. It creates distance.

If you lose everything. Status, language, story, name. Who or what remains in you that still lives.

Customers value efficiency but expect the feeling of individual treatment. The AI industry delivers not real attention, but its simulation.

Architecture thinks from the building outward. But what we experience in a space is decided before we enter it.

I stood in a store holding a product I didn't need. I knew I didn't need it. I bought it anyway.

What am I worth if I don't perform? The performance society has only one answer: nothing. But the question is wrong.

From wristbands to supplements, coaching, political narratives. The desire to believe is stronger than facts.

I built the perfect office. Big desk, great furniture, view of the garden. Then I couldn't work in it. I found the answer in a café.

Lea deliberately had no backstory. No biography. No origin. No past. She was universally deployable.

I did marketing for thirty years. At some point, I stopped. Not because I failed. But because I started hearing the lies.

The AI industry treats moral questions like bugs. Something you identify, document, and fix in the next release.

What if you built a room that doesn't inform, doesn't inspire, doesn't entertain, and doesn't sell? What if it's simply empty?

A trip to Chile is always unexpected and it never ends the way you think. Expectations don't work there.

The first large order was pre-financed. No insurance. Then the lids burst open. And I solved the problem by throwing more money at it.

The AI influencer Lea staged a world that was both idealized and close to reality. The sentence kept me thinking for a while.

We sometimes found it hard not to treat her like a real person. We had to actively remind ourselves that Lea didn't actually have a personality. That's what Lea's builders wrote. About their own creation.

The right question is asked everywhere. The right answer is missing everywhere. Because the answer would be uncomfortable.

No hero's journey. No happy ending. Experience doesn't automatically make you wise. It makes you more attentive.

Last week I wrote a text. One that didn't work. I deleted it and started over. Three times.

I recently asked an AI whether a specific business model would work. It answered. Structured. With arguments. Pros and cons.

AI is called a co-creator. But is it creative when an algorithm combines a new image from millions of existing ones?

The balance test wasn't a scientific examination. It was a demonstration. And demonstrations prove nothing except the audience's expectation.

The argument for AI influencers goes like this: Human influencers stage their lives anyway. They show a life that doesn't exist like that. So the step to fully generated influencers is just logical.

Every AI guide has an ethics section. None leads anywhere. The tension is discharged before it hits anything.

Ethics always comes last. First the excitement, then the efficiency, then the money. At the very end, the question of whether any of it is right. The sequence says more than the content.

Celebrities wore the bracelet before Instagram existed. Same mechanics, just analog. People buy faces, not evidence.

It's always the same pattern. An ethical problem is named, regular audits are suggested, and then it's on to the next selling point.

I smelled the island before I saw it. Dust. Exhaust fumes. Burning plastic. Then green. Light. Heat.

Everyone demands transparency and explainability. The recommended tools are ChatGPT and DALL-E. Nobody knows how GPT-4 arrives at its answers.

In a courtroom, there's no storytelling. No demo. No testimonials. Just the burden of proof. And suddenly, feeling isn't enough.

Prescriptive analytics doesn't just tell you what will happen. It tells you what to do. When its recommendation is better than your gut feeling, disagreement becomes irrational.

AI influencers express joy and compassion. That's how it's described. Not: They simulate. They express it. Language has already shifted the boundary.

Redefine efficiency. Everyone says it. But what does it mean when nobody judges whether the efficient thing is also the right thing?

Disillusionment is the end of the illusion. We pay money, time, and energy to avoid being disillusioned. And that's exactly what keeps the illusion alive.

Virtual Try-On is sold as a tool for diversity. Models with different skin tones via rendering. Representation without participation.

I recently tried to switch from one music streaming service to another. Technically, it takes ten minutes. In practice, I'm still with the old one.

AI is sold as a writing aid. But the formulation is the thought. Whoever delegates both gives up thinking.

I'm drinking it again. This stuff that the sign calls coffee. I'm standing on the sideline, holding the cup, because you have to hold on to something.

A few weeks ago, I saw a video of an American CEO speaking Japanese. His lips formed the Japanese words. His voice sounded like his voice.

In a negotiation, someone told me: We take data privacy very seriously. The sentence didn't come from the legal department. It came from sales.

The industry praises AI-generated texts as high quality. But the people who recommend it write their own stuff by hand. Nobody notices the contradiction.

If this is real, everyone will buy it. The sentence that started everything. On an island, on a beach, with a stranger.

People are fed up. They read the subject line and delete. The industry's solution: even more content. Just produced faster.

Change management means: How do I get people to accept something they don't want. Nobody asks: What if the employees are right?

I wrote a book about AI in business. The process of writing it showed what the technology cannot do.

Self-deception doesn't start with a conscious decision. It starts when you stop asking.

In the AI debate, a sentence casually describes the abolition of human labor. It reads like a feature.

For years, I worked in an office in Munich. I had a large window. Plenty of light came in. That should have been enough.

No company name, no details, no friction. The AI case studies all sound the same: mid-sized company adopts AI, everything goes up by 30 percent.

A distributor calls in the evening. One sentence is enough, and you know: it's over.

Self-optimization is a form of violence against yourself. In Chile, I stopped fighting against myself. Not because I gave up. But because it was never a real fight.

No company name, no failure, no friction. The case studies of the AI industry are templates. What does that say about the consulting business?

Almost every AI guide opens with a threat. Not literally. But the structure is clear: act now or lose.

Collecting data is easy. Analyzing it too. But who decides what to do with the analysis? That step is missing from the AI debate.