Why KCS, Why Now?

A few years ago, talking about artificial intelligence in secondary schools might have seemed premature. Today, pupils are already using it. Among French businesses with ten or more employees, reported use of AI technologies tripled in two years, from 6% in 2023 to 18% in 2025 (Insee, 2026). At the same time, our society is ageing: 22% of the French population is aged 65 or over in 2026 (Insee, 2026).

Those two figures tell very different stories. One captures a technology spreading at remarkable speed. The other reflects a demographic shift unfolding over decades. Yet these different timescales eventually meet in the same place: our lives.

That, for me, is where the subject begins.

Understanding fast enough to remain able to act

Digital technology has already changed profoundly how we work, find information, access our rights, build relationships and consume. Artificial intelligence opens another stage, more dizzying still, because it touches directly on the production of knowledge, creativity and tasks we once assumed belonged exclusively to human intelligence.

These changes offer extraordinary possibilities. They are also rapidly shifting the skills we need to understand the world in which we live.

I have been interested in this question of speed for a long time.

It is now becoming very concrete. What does autonomy mean when an essential procedure requires someone to navigate a digital environment they barely understand? How do we teach a young person to use AI without also teaching them to question what it produces? How can a small charity or community organisation keep pace with technical change that even large organisations struggle to absorb?

Access to equipment does not answer those questions. In 2023, 15.7% of people aged 15 or over living in France excluding Mayotte were digitally excluded according to Insee's definition, while 30.3% had low digital skills (Insee, 2025). Even when someone can use the internet, completing an administrative procedure can remain difficult: fear of making a mistake, a poorly designed interface, unclear instructions or no-one available to ask.

We have placed many services within a click's reach. We have not necessarily given everyone the same ability to make use of them.

Changes that will not wait for us

Digital technology is only part of what is happening.

Climate disruption confronts us with the physical limits of our development models and with choices that will affect how we produce, travel, consume and live. An ageing population is gradually changing our needs for solidarity and support. Social media has transformed the circulation of information and our relationship with public debate. AI is now accelerating the production of content — true, false or simply unverifiable — on a new scale.

These developments do not share the same causes, pace or answers. I am wary of narratives that try to reduce everything to a single crisis.

What I do see is a common difficulty: our ability to understand, choose and act must keep pace with an environment that is becoming more complex.

And that ability is distributed very unevenly.

Some people have the time, education, networks or resources they need to adapt. Others encounter these changes only when they become a very practical obstacle: an application they cannot complete, a job that is changing, a scam they struggle to identify, a tool that has become unavoidable, or information whose reliability is increasingly difficult to judge.

This is often where social action begins.

Strengthening those already working on the ground

Charities, community organisations, local authorities and frontline services know these realities because they encounter them every day.

France has nearly 13 million volunteers, including 5.5 million who volunteer every week, while the non-profit sector employs 1.9 million people (Associations.gouv.fr, La France associative en mouvement 2025). Behind those headline figures are very different organisations: some resilient, others fragile; some highly professionalised, others sustained by a handful of volunteers.

They do not all need help. And when they do, they certainly do not all need the same thing.

That principle matters to KCS.

One organisation may need to rebuild a website. Another may need to secure its data. A local authority team may want to understand what AI is changing in its work. A community organisation may need a few hours of legal expertise rather than six months of support.

Being useful starts with understanding what is actually missing.

That sounds obvious. On the ground, it is not always so.

Helping existing skills reach the right place

Many of the skills needed by charities, community organisations and public bodies already exist elsewhere.

They are found in businesses, among independent professionals and students, and across law, communications, technology, management, design and training. Together they represent a vast reservoir of expertise — and often a desire to be useful that does not easily find the right point of application.

Responsible business engagement becomes very concrete here.

Financial philanthropy remains essential to many causes. Skills-based volunteering offers another route: enabling professional expertise to circulate. In its 2024 corporate philanthropy barometer, 16% of the corporate donors surveyed by Admical said they offered skills-based philanthropy (mécénat de compétences) (Admical, 2024).

I am less interested in that figure as a measure of generosity than as an indication of potential.

Giving time guarantees nothing. Poorly directed expertise can create little value and a great deal of coordination. Highly specialised knowledge can be decisive when it reaches the right place at the right moment. Good training can leave a team able to continue without the person who delivered it.

That last outcome matters particularly to me.

KCS as a point of passage

KCS grew from a conviction: part of the answer already exists within society, but it does not always reach the places where it could be useful.

We can work directly with people. When we work with young people on artificial intelligence, with older people on digital autonomy, or with people seeking to create an association, transmission happens directly with those concerned.

We can also strengthen those already there: a charity, a local authority, a team or a community organisation. A few hours of the right expertise can sometimes help them do more for the people they already serve.

And we can build bridges with businesses that want to engage their teams responsibly.

These situations call for the same discipline: listen before proposing, understand before building, and pass on enough knowledge for others to become autonomous.

That is also why I do not want KCS to be measured against the scale of the problems discussed here. They are vastly larger than we are.

I would rather look at what genuinely changes after we have been involved.

We are only beginning

I do not know what artificial intelligence will look like in ten years. No-one seriously does. Still less do I know which technologies will be commonplace in 2040.

What I do know is what I would like us to preserve through these changes: the ability to understand what is happening to us, to retain a degree of control over our choices, to learn at any age, to pass on what we know, and to rely on others when our own skills reach their limits.

KCS is still young. Some of our methods will work. Others will need to evolve or be abandoned. We will need to measure more, document what genuinely creates value and remain clear-eyed enough to recognise what does not.

That discipline matters to me as much as our ambition.

If the changes ahead are as profound as we can reasonably expect, the question will not only be how far our technologies can go.

It will be how many of us can still understand the world they are helping to transform, find our place within it and act upon it.

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Adel Riame
Founder of Karma Com Solidarité