AI, My Friend Bernard, and the Question That Changes Everything

AI won't replace you. But it will make it impossible to keep avoiding the real question: why do you do what you do?

It's a question that never leaves me. I asked it intensely in 2018, during a profound personal turning point I share in this article. This past weekend, my best friend forced me to ask it again. Here's what I realized.

Back in the 90s

This past weekend, I was with Bernard, let's call him that. Nearly 30 years of friendship. The kind of friend who knows you before you know yourself.

Bernard is an engineer. Brilliant. Dedicated. Principled. And firmly rooted in a time when things were perhaps a little simpler. He still buys all his CDs. He has no high-speed internet subscription. He watches live TV. He has no Instagram account. He knows how to use technology, he just refuses to by default.

Stepping into Bernard's world is a bit like opening a window onto the 90s. And honestly? It's soothing. Not because the past was better, but because it throws into sharp relief, with an almost painful clarity, what we've lost. Slowness. Presence. The simple fact that information doesn't constantly come looking for you. At his place, you're almost forced to be present, present to the conversation, to the people, to the moment. Something in that space resists distraction and reminds you of what matters.

At one point during the weekend, with barely concealed impatience, he pointed out that AI seemed to dominate 90% of my conversations for the past few months. He was exaggerating, but barely, and that was his felt sense of things. And that's what mattered.

That remark stayed with me for days.

2026, technology, and then what?

I talk about AI a lot, yes. About what it does, what it transforms, what it disrupts, where it's headed. But what truly matters to me is what AI reveals.

Artificial intelligence acts as a brutal mirror. It forces us to confront a question that the technological wave of the past few decades had simply pushed aside:

Artificial intelligence acts as a brutal mirror. It forces us to confront a question that the technological wave of the past few decades had simply pushed aside?

If the meaning of human existence lies in ever more efficient use of energy, if we are at bottom biological machines optimized for performance, then yes, we are headed toward obsolescence. A better machine will replace us, and that's logical.

But if "the living" is something more, something noble, particular, transcendent, then AI is not a threat. It's an accelerator. A catalyst pushing us, perhaps for the first time at scale, to collectively articulate what makes us precious.

I honestly oscillate between these two hypotheses. But I choose to orient my efforts with intention toward the second. I'm a computer engineer by training, I've been programming since childhood, and I'm among the first to adopt new tools. Maybe that's naïve. Or maybe it's a lucid bet on the human.

When comfort is no longer enough

The question of meaning didn't come to me through a book or a conference. It imposed itself brutally, from within..

In 2018, I held a VP position in a stable organization. Comfortable. Well-compensated. Expense account. Travel at will. Michelin-starred restaurants. Everything you're supposed to want.

And I no longer found meaning in it.

What followed was anything but a smooth transition. It was a cathartic midlife crisis, a deliberate clean slate, painful and necessary, to rebuild on foundations that were truly mine. My intuition, slowly coming into focus, told me the world was heading into major turbulence, that established models would be disrupted, and that I wanted to navigate those changes as a free agent rather than a cog in a machine that no longer resembled me.

So I jumped.

Building from the inside

What emerged professionally in the years that followed was rooted in deep, long-held reflection. Not a detailed plan, more of an intuition that the world would change fundamentally. I had been thinking about this future since childhood. It arrived faster than expected.

Coaching and facilitation, first. Helping people clarify what truly matters, and build a path toward it. That's the heart of what I do under the AMIRAL banner.

Consulting, next. Helping organizations navigate technological and human change. Keeping people at the center, especially when pressure pushes in the other direction.

And voice, finally. What few people know is that I'm also a voice-over actor under the name Amiral Media. A craft I love deeply, and one that finds itself squarely in the eye of the AI disruption storm. I live, in my own skin, the very transformations I help others navigate.

Three pillars. All oriented around the same fundamental question: how do we bring out the best in people, whatever the context?

The next frontier: meaning

Meaning has become the rarest and most precious resource of our time. Not money. Not productivity. Not even time.

In a world where AI can write, create, and optimize faster than we ever could, the question is no longer what to do or how to do it. The question is: why? What am I getting up for in the morning, and for whom?

Those who can't answer that question will drift. Organizations that ignore it will lose their best people, those self-aware enough to refuse investing themselves in something that carries no meaning. And they will also lose their clients, who are increasingly able to sense the difference between an organization that knows why it exists and a polished facade with nothing underneath.

Thank you, Bernard

My friend Bernard will probably never read this article. Not because he doesn't care about what I do, but because he consumes information differently. And that's perfectly fine.

But if he ever does, I want him to know that his remark gave me one of the most precious gifts a friend can offer: an honest mirror.

It forced me to articulate, once again, why all of this matters to me. Not because technology is fascinating in itself. But because behind every transformation, there are human beings searching for their place. Searching for meaning. Who deserve to be accompanied.

That's exactly why I do what I do. And I've never been more motivated to do it.

Are you navigating a transition, professional, personal, or organizational, and looking to clarify what truly matters? Let's talk.