From Stepping Back to Stepping Up
Me to the Power of AI
In this article, I share how I used AI Fluency, Expertise, Focus, Responsibility, and Emotional Intelligence to prepare for a role I initially felt unqualified for. It’s a personal story about how Futurebraining capabilities work together and how saying yes got easier with the proper support.
And it started with an invitation I almost declined.
Addressing the Gender Gap
I was asked to join a task force to address the gender gap in tech companies. While I consider myself competent in talent management, I cannot say the same about the root causes of the gender gap.
Impostor syndrome alert!
Despite the topic aligning closely with my values, I would’ve declined the offer in the past. Here’s how it usually went:
I would crawl indiscriminately through the web, digging the deepest rabbit hole in the history of mankind.
I would finally understand that it would take me ages to be anywhere near an acceptable level of competency in gender diversity.
I am throwing in the towel and ultimately declining to join a project that would allow me to grow as a professional and a human being.
AI+me: a new operating mode
That was the old me. One real impact of adopting AI is the courage to engage with new challenges. I now work in a me + AI operating mode.
Here’s how that played out in this case—moving step by step through the AI Fluency Pyramid, from productivity to co-intelligence.
Step 1: Determining the scope of the knowledge I am missing with Chat GPT: 3 minutes.
“Where do I start? What do I need to cover?”
In less than two minutes of chatting informally with Chat GPT Pro, I had narrowed down a comprehensive list of topics to expand my knowledge of the gender gap in tech.
Focus is the key factor here. If you are a curious specimen like me, the temptation to explore related topics is enormous.
For Chat GPT users, you can find the entire conversation here:
Step 2: Build my knowledge, study, and accelerate mastery with Gemini Deep Research: 3 Hours.
“It would have been great if there were an exhaustive research paper about this…”
How many times and how many hours have I wasted online trying to find trustworthy and fit-for-purpose research?
If you ever dreamt of writing your research paper on niche topics or things nobody cares about, you no longer have to dream: Gemini Deep Research (Pro)
I leverage Gemini Deep Research to raise my awareness and build the foundations. I absorb information, process it, and master the vocabulary and context of a specific topic. This is Level 2 of the Futurebraining AI Pyramid.
Many people use AI to skip that phase, shortcutting the build-up process by prompting the AI for direct answers and results, outsourcing a significant part of the cognitive process to AI.
If you don’t build expertise on a topic, your dependency on AI increases, and your cognitive abilities deteriorate until they disappear altogether. It’s the GPS syndrome: most of us cannot go from one point to another without our phone because we have forgotten our orientation skills, counting on Google Maps or Waze as a crutch.
Instead, I have happily delegated to Gemini Deep Research the cumbersome and time-consuming exercise of finding the appropriate sources and articles and making sense of them. Reaching the same level of exhaustivity and accuracy would have taken me weeks or months.
Here is the full conversation in Gemini:
After I gave my research order, Gemini took ten minutes to generate a comprehensive report with links to 89 sources. When I discovered the concept of “leaky pipeline,” I decided to read more thoroughly about it in the sources listed by the report. Being a data freak, I studied the statistics linked to the Eurostat report quite a lot.
👉 My annotated notes in
This phase also includes curating and scrutinizing the content I rely on, filtering out the content I consider unnecessary for my purpose or that does not meet the quality standards required to be a credible source.
Step 3: Deep and Targeted Learning with Notebook LM. 2 hours.
“How do I chew and make mine all of this?”
I remember the first time I used Notebook LM. It almost felt like magic. It was scary and exciting at the same time. Once I overcame my amazement, it opened up the capacity to generate personalized learning from any source.
Notebook LM is my go-to learning tool. I feed it with sources and reports, both pre-identified and self-generated (e.g., the same customized reports from Gemini we discussed before), and then ask it to build documents for me to learn from. I control the source material, driving a focused learning process.
Fully in Level 3 of the Futurebraining AI Pyramid. Notebook LM adapts to my needs, to my pace, to my objective, and to my mastery. AI to the service of growing my abilities, building new skills.
Since generating customized content, including audio, is natural and can be prompted, the learning process is optimized and targeted: visual content, briefing, quizzes…
The prompt in the screenshot has generated the following audio:
It’s great for an introduction to the topic, and transversely addresses the main issues in 20 minutes—enough upskilling to constructively intervene in a generic conversation about the gender gap in tech.
Listen to the AI podcast generated through my prompt.
I would not say I am now an expert on the leaky pipeline, but I understand precisely what it entails and its implications.
Step 4: Productivity and co-creation
“Let’s build something new.”
When some dystopian books and movies featured different kinds of humanoids relieving you from some physical tasks, I remember thinking how ridiculous the idea was. I could not anticipate that I would have a cognitive companion one day.
This is where things shift. I now create a custom GPT for each project, setting clear boundaries and uploading all relevant documentation.
This is Level 4 of the Futurebraining AI Pyramid: Co-Intelligence. The point is not output, but interplay. The GPT helps me explore, refine, stress-test, and shape ideas, but only because I’ve already done the foundational work.
Expertise isn’t just facts. It includes knowing the institutional context, stakeholder dynamics, past failures, and hidden agendas. AI can’t see all that. Only I can connect those dots.
But now, I’m no longer thinking alone. I’ve built enough fluency and focus to stay in control, while the AI handles the heavy lifting and keeps pace with my ideas.
The companion is a dedicated assistant, helping me with the most administrative and productivity tasks:
But also a permanently available thinking, creation, and innovation partner designed exclusively for me to bounce, refine, and mature ideas.
Welcome to Level 4 of the AI Pyramid.
What You Can Do Next
The point isn’t to copy my setup—it’s to start building your own, one move at a time, while climbing the AI Fluency Pyramid.
Here’s how that can look in practice:
Define before you dive. Use ChatGPT to set your scope. That’s AI Fluency: asking better questions rather than just chasing better answers.
Delegate the digging. Let Gemini surface credible sources, but stay present. Focus and Expertise kick in here—cutting through noise and building real understanding.
Digest deliberately. Feed what matters into Notebook LM or your learning system of choice. That’s Responsibility: not outsourcing your thinking, but sharpening it.
Co-create intentionally. Use a custom GPT to build with, not just get from. The output quality depends on how clearly you define the inputs, and that takes all of the above.
And one more thing.
Don’t forget Emotional Intelligence.
Now that I’ve researched, structured, and created, the final step isn’t to impress anyone. It’s to show up—prepared, curious, and ready to contribute to something that matters to me: closing the gender gap in tech.
That’s where Emotional Intelligence comes in. Knowing things is not the same as understanding people. No AI can do that part for me.
The tools are here. Futurebraining helps you turn AI into a real advantage without losing your mind or independence.
Just start. Make it yours.
 | A guest post by
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