On September 10, Marion Carré, CEO of Ask Mona, is publishing The Treadmill Paradox with JC Lattès. In this book, she explores the paradox of generative AI: a tool that accelerates our ideas but also risks standardizing our thinking. On this occasion, we asked her three questions.

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Why publish a book on AI now?

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Since the rise of generative AI among the general public with the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, I feel that we’ve reached a real crossroads. AI is now spreading across all sectors, into both our professional and personal lives. Two paths lie ahead in terms of how we choose to approach it, and that choice will determine whether or not its true potential is realized. On the one hand, there’s the temptation to give in to intellectual laziness by following AI blindly, at the risk of impoverishing the work we delegate to it. On the other hand, there’s the possibility of using it to help us progress, stimulate our ideas, and enrich our creativity. It’s precisely this tension that I wanted to explore in this book.

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What does the treadmill paradox mean?

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This is where I introduce the metaphor of the treadmill. On the surface, it makes us move forward: our thinking speeds up, our output multiplies, and we feel more creative and more efficient. But if we rely too heavily on it, the treadmill takes us all in the same direction, at the risk of standardizing our creations and reducing our ability to truly invent. The paradox is this illusion of progress that can actually impoverish instead of enrich. The challenge of this book is to show how to turn the treadmill into a running track: not to turn away from AI, but to reinvest it differently so that it becomes a driver of effort, progress, and creativity.

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How can AI be used creatively?

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AI can become a tremendous lever for creativity, provided we don’t use it as a mere shortcut but as a tool for reflection and dialogue. Three attitudes seem essential to me:

1. Demystify: understand AI’s strengths and limitations to use it wisely, instead of seeing it as a magic wand that can be mastered with a few prompts.
2. Learn before delegating: know how to perform a task before entrusting it to AI, just as we learn multiplication tables before using a calculator. This is the only way to have the expertise needed to challenge the machine and avoid blind reliance on its recommendations.
3. Keep the first and last mile of thinking: feed AI with your own ideas, then question and refine the result instead of accepting it as is. It’s in this back-and-forth process that creativity and originality can emerge.

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The machine itself keeps working in the same way. What makes the difference is how we choose to use it and the meaning we give to what it produces.

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The Treadmill Paradox is Marion Carré’s call to rethink how we use AI: as a driver of effort and creativity. A book addressed to both professionals and the general public, available in bookstores starting September 10.